


A List of Typos Made By God

by cherie_morte



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Amnesiac Dean, Angst, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:06:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 44,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9390269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherie_morte/pseuds/cherie_morte
Summary: The summer before Sam leaves for Stanford, Dean begins to forget his relationship with Sam. Every morning he remembers less, and Sam is just waiting for the day Dean forgets him completely.





	1. Prologue: Who Dares Affirm?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of my 2011 [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/), which was originally posted [here](http://infatuated-ink.livejournal.com/60451.html). More notes can be found on LiveJournal.

He calls her to him.

There is no control left in her. She wasn’t looking. She’s been hiding. Starving. Trying not to be what she is. But this—this scent, the promise that the real thing will be even better. The smell is so strong she can taste it on her tongue. Starving. She can’t—won’t—fight it.

She’s never found a feast like this.

The trail leads to a bar. Unsurprising. The people she feeds on are the lusty kind, she comes to bars often. _Did_ when she still let herself. One more won’t end the world.

She walks in and looks around. The room is packed, but she has no trouble zeroing in on the man she could smell from miles away. He’s at the bar, holding a shot glass and frowning. He’s very beautiful, but that doesn’t matter to her. She would want anyone who smelled like this.

She looks down, wondering if she’s changed yet, and she has. She has long, masculine fingers now, a plaid shirt, blue jeans over legs that seem to go on forever. She smiles and approaches the man, leaning against the bar counter next to him.

He turns to look at her, but his face doesn’t light up with desire the way she’s used to. He scowls at her instead. “What are you doing here?”

In her head, she curses it. She’s not just something pretty. She’s someone he knows. It hardly ever happens; no one finds exactly what they want in this world. Yet here she is, and now she’ll have to play her part.

She’s unsure of how to answer, so she smiles and takes an easy guess. “I came to see you.”

He’s focused entirely on her, or on the person he thinks she is. She knows on instinct that the scent that pulled her in is the boy he’s talking to. This is the kind of thing that made her stop feeding. The man loves him more than she’s ever known a man to love, she can smell it, and she’s taking that from him. She doesn’t want to, but she’s not leaving without tasting this.

He stands up and throws a few bills on the counter, grabbing her by the arm roughly and pulling her outside. As soon as they’re out of the bar he turns on her. “You know you’re not supposed to come to places like this,” he says. “Just because we get in a fight doesn’t mean you don’t have to respect the rules, Sam.”

“I don’t want to fight,” she says. “That’s what I came here to say.”

The man’s face softens. “That doesn’t make it okay. What would Dad say if he found out you followed me to a bar? We’d both be in trouble.”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I don’t really care.”

“I swear, kid, your attitude.” The man shakes his head, looking somewhat fond and a whole lot annoyed. “You shouldn’t be here, it’s for your own good.”

“I missed you.”

He laughs a little. “Could’ve called.”

“Wanted to see you.” She steps into his space. “Wanted to be able to touch you.”

Thankfully, the man’s body relaxes with her approach. “Yeah?” he asks, smiling out of the side of his mouth. “Two hours ago you told me to go fuck myself.”

She isn’t really interested in family politics, and she can tell the man wants a kiss. That’s all she needs, he can work the fight out on his own time. She leans down and he opens to her, lips eager against hers.

The first thing she tastes is fireworks. She sees a young boy in a field, and the boy is her universe. She kisses harder, eager to claim the memory. The boy’s smile begins to shape, his eyes look at her like she’s his universe, too.

She’ll never need to feed again. She can live on this forever.


	2. Part 1: Arbitrary, Loveless Permutations

There aren't many good mornings in Sam's life, but this starts out as one. The sun is streaming in through the motel window, rays strong enough to suggest they've managed to sleep through most of the morning. He rolls over to see the digital clock on the nightstand. It says 11:48 a.m. in bright red numbers, and for some reason, Sam imagines it telling him the time out loud in Dad's voice.

He chuckles at it and lets his head drop back onto Dean's chest. It's been an impossibly long time since they've been this free—no one to check up on them, no hunt to worry about, no school for Sam or work for Dean. Just them, a motel room that's almost decent by human (not just Winchester) standards, and a big window with bright green curtains advertising a beautiful morning.

He makes a soft, content sound and watches Dean's chest rise and fall under a thin white sheet. He's smiling in his sleep, and it's been too long since Sam saw that, too. So, in some hideously ironic twist of fate, Sam actually lets himself think it's going to be a pretty good day.

He places a palm on Dean's chest, hand spread over his brother's skin, and begins to shake him awake.

Dean smiles his 'I totally got laid last night' best and stretches out a bit before opening his eyes.

"Good morning," says Sam, brushing lips against Dean's neck. "It's almost noon."

Dean's eyes shoot open and he sits up in alarm, stares at Sam with wide eyes.

"Relax, Dean," he says, trying to push his brother back into the mattress. "Dude, calm down, we don't have a hunt or anything, I just thought we'd get breakfast."

"Why are we—?" Dean looks down and pulls the sheet up over himself, then lets out a pathetic noise when that only leaves more of Sam uncovered.

Sam laughs. "That's really cute, Dean," he replies, crawling toward his brother in bed.

Dean shoves Sam away so hard and so suddenly that Sam actually tumbles onto the floor. "Ow, Dean, what the fuck?"

"What the fuck me? Man, what the fuck are you doing?" Dean's voice is shrill—not something Sam wants to hear in the morning, but he's doing a decent job of making whatever prank this is sound convincing.

Sam grabs his boxers off the pile of clothes on the floor and slips them on before standing up, because it was a lot more awesome to be naked when he thought he was getting good morning sex. "You're an asshole," he tells Dean, rubbing his elbow where it hit the wall. "And whatever joke you're going for isn't funny."

"Yeah, Sam," Dean says seriously. "It's not funny."

"If you think agreeing is gonna get the blowjob I was planning to give you back, you're dead wrong." Sam probably doesn't mean it, but he really feels like he does right now.

Dean's eyes somehow get rounder. "Dude, what are you saying?"

"Do I really have to spell it out? B-J, Dean. I was going to offer. Not anymore. Get dressed, I want pancakes."

"Oh God," Dean says. He wipes a hand over his face and shakes his head. "What—why do you think I—how did we get—?"

"How did we get what, Dean? I can’t understand a word your ass is saying right now."

" _Naked_ ," Dean replies, his voice rising again. He looks around the room in horror. "Together!"

Sam smirks. "It all started when you fucked me last night, remember that?"

"Why would you say that?" Dean asks, his voice weak. "Why are you saying any of this?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I wouldn't—I don't even remember getting drunk, but I don't care how fucked up I was, I wouldn't do that."

"You did it, Dean, and you were stone-cold sober." Sam quirks his lips. "For once."

Dean shakes his head vehemently. "Brother," he says. "You're my brother."

"I'd noticed that," says Sam, trying to get close enough for a kiss.

Dean pushes him away again. "Brother, Sam," he repeats. "Wouldn't, not ever."

Sam stares. Dean's a good liar, Sam knows that. But he has tells, and Sam has them memorized. There's no lie in his expression, nothing but fear and disgust. Sam pulls away. "What are you saying, Dean?" 

"I'm not saying anything until you tell me what you're playing at."

Sam spends the next hour feeling like he needs to throw up.

As if pancakes will help, Dean is dressed and waiting to take Sam to breakfast as soon as he gets out of the shower. Sam considers asking Dean what part of Sam being sick to his stomach made eating seem like the best option, but at least they can both agree that breakfast is something they do together.

Sam doesn't touch his short stack, stabs at it with his fork and draws swirls in the maple syrup. Across the table, Dean has a plate loaded with bacon, and it's probably the first time in Sam's life that Dean's food goes ignored just as long as Sam's does.

"We should find a hunt," Dean says, eyes fixed on his coffee. "All this free time is getting to us."

Sam laughs softly and rolls his eyes at Dean when his brother looks up, surprised. "We already have a hunt."

Dean lifts a forkful of eggs, stares at it for a few seconds, and then puts it back down on the plate without trying it. "Oh yeah? What's that?"

"You," Sam replies.

"I'm not the one thinking crazy things, Sam," Dean replies in a sharp tone.

"You’ve either been messed with, or you're purposefully pretending the last three years never happened."

Dean shakes his head. "Not that, Sam. That never did—will. Talking about it is making me sick."

It almost garners a laugh. Sam's the one who spent the morning throwing up. Sam's the one wondering if this is his brother's way of telling him he didn't want it all along.

"Did you piss anyone off recently?" Sam asks. Just a regular hunt, he tells himself. Routine questions. Don't think about it too much. "Someone who could get revenge?"

"Sick bastard if it got its revenge making my little brother think—" Dean stops, takes the question seriously for a few minutes before sighing. "No," he says. "No one. Nothing I can remember."

Sam nods slowly. He reaches across the table, and Dean flinches before forcibly relaxing, letting Sam touch him. "Are you punishing me, Dean?" Sam asks.

"Punishing you for what, Sammy? Not polishing your Girl Scout badge collection?"

"You know what," Sam answers. "Stanford, Dean. Is this how you get me back? Pretend we don't exist?"

Dean's lips turn into the familiar Stanford Scowl for a millisecond before he smoothes over it with a placid look. "Why would I punish you for Stanford, Sam? I've told you a million times, I'm proud of you."

"You didn't mean it," Sam points out. "Not all the way, at least."

"We're gonna find out what did this to you, okay? You'll be all better before you go. Not letting you leave with whatever weird false memories some _thing_ planted in your head."

"What happened to one good summer, Dean? It was your idea to not talk about the whole thing and try to enjoy what we have. If you're pissed, tell me, because this is fucked up, man."

"You brought Stanford up," Dean says. "You brought all of this shit up." He rests his forehead in his hand, like he's nursing a hangover. "I don't even know what's going on."

Sam doesn't, either. He has a moment of panic—what if Dean is right? It's just as likely that everything Sam remembers between them, every good thing Sam's had in the last three years, is fake as it is that Dean just so happened to wake up with selective amnesia. Dean didn't bump his head last night, hasn’t gotten seriously hurt in weeks. He hasn’t forgotten their names or how he takes his coffee or even the things they both know he wants to forget. That's not how amnesia works, only forgetting the times they've fucked or kissed or touched, no way. Dean is doing this on purpose, or Sam is the one who's wrong.

But that can't be it, because Sam's memories are too vivid, much too precious. If he's wrong, if this is another sick revenge plot some witch set loose on them…Sam is more disgusted by the suggestion none of it happened than relieved by the promise he might not have spent the last three years more-or-less dating his brother.

"We woke up together," Sam says, clinging to it. "We only have one bed in our room."

Dean shrugs. He reaches out for his coffee, and Sam's doubts dissolve. His eyes catch on a red mark on Dean's wrist. He wants to grab his brother and scream that he did it—Dean liked it—and how could he not remember that? He manages to restrain himself by eating one solitary piece of toast.

"Obviously the thing doing this knows its shitty pranks," Dean says, forced indifference thick in every word as he brings the mug to his lips.

"No," Sam replies stubbornly. "I'm sorry, Dean, you're wrong."

The day quite obviously sucks.

Dean doesn't miss a chance to ask Sam if he feels alright, if they should call Dad ( _And say what?_ Sam replies every time, which shuts Dean up pretty fast), if Sam needs to take a break or something. Dean won't look at him, recoils when Sam touches him, like Sam has finally disappointed him one too many times for him to keep pretending he doesn't notice.

Sam is still half-convinced it's a joke—that Dean will try to curl around him at the end of the day and tell him everything's all right. It's not alright, it won't be. Dean is not supposed to go this far, even when he's being an ass, which isn't exactly rare. He's not supposed to crush Sam, and today? Today is going to give Sam issues for the rest of his life, even if it is all over by dinner.

But still. Dean sucks at being sensitive, Sam always knew this, and as pissed as he's going to be, he takes comfort in telling himself it's nothing serious. He keeps his distance from Dean as much as he can, it's the only thing he can think of at this point, and waits until he can pretend to laugh it off and try to be okay with it in the morning.

By the time they're back at the motel for the night, Sam has almost convinced himself Dean is pulling his leg. He doesn't complain when Dean changes the one-bed room for two queens, it's not like they've never shared a queen before, and if this little game is how Dean is coping with things, maybe Sam deserves one bad day. They've had it abnormally easy for almost a month now, and Sam knows Dean's been upset ever since the college envelopes started showing up.

He waits until Dean's settled in, stealing the remote with a triumphant grin, and zoned into some shitty TV show about doctors before he sneaks across the room to Dean's bed and slips under the covers.

"Sam," he says very calmly. "What are you doing?"

Sam smiles and presses a long kiss into his neck. "I know," Sam whispers. "You don't remember." He slides his hand down Dean's chest, feels Dean's pulse picking up under his fingers. "Thought you might like it if I reminded you."

Dean doesn't react much. He lets out a long breath, relaxes, and doesn't push Sam away. So Sam thinks, thank God, it's over. It's finally over. And then Dean's voice breaks through his kisses, and Sam pulls away, looks his brother in the eye, and realizes it isn't over. It isn't _going to be over_. Dean's not fucking around.

"Please don't, Sammy," he says. Sam's seen Dean cry maybe three times in his life—once in the last decade. Dean's not quite crying yet, but he looks like he wants to, and now Sam is officially scared.

"Dean," says Sam, wrapping his arm tight around Dean's side, pulling closer to him. "Dean, I'm sorry."

"I know why you're doing this, okay? I get it." Dean shakes his head and lifts Sam's arm, breaking all contact. "You figured me out. You hate me. You should. But this is cruel, Sam. It's not like you."

"Figured you out? Figured what out, Dean? That you're full of shit if you expect me to believe you don't want this, or that your little joke is getting pretty fucking old?"

"I wasn't trying to joke," he says. "I wasn't trying to lie to you. I just, I don't know, was stupid enough to hope you wouldn't figure it out. But you figure everything out, don't you?"

"Dean," Sam says, drawing away. "I'm not trying to—"

"I wasn't gonna touch you," he says. "I wouldn't have touched you. You should know that."

Sam's mouth opens, but nothing comes out. It's not true—Dean's touched Sam plenty, and he doesn't _want_ it to be true, not ever.

"You don't have to dangle yourself like some steak and see if I go for it, man. It's not fair."

"But you—"

"I know I'm the one who's fucked up here, Sam. You think I don't know that? But this is fucked up, too."

He throws the blankets aside; Sam holds him back before he can bolt from the bed.

"I don't think it's fucked up," Sam says, pulling Dean back down. "Dean, I don't hate you. I'm not trying to hurt you, okay?" Dean doesn't look mollified. Sam strokes a hand down his arm, hoping the touch will relax Dean the way it always has instead of sending him further into hysterics. "I'm not," Sam leans close and nuzzles into Dean's neck. "It's okay, Dean. I wasn't playing with you."

He turns Dean's face toward him, ignores the scared-little-boy look on his brother's face, and gives him a soft kiss.

"Sam." Dean shudders but doesn't shove him away this time. Sam kisses him again, longer, until finally Dean opens to it. It's like he has to teach Dean how to kiss, Dean is limp and slow to follow, but Sam holds on as long as he can, terrified Dean won't let him get away with it again.

"I want you, too, Dean," Sam says when Dean pulls away. And it's ten different levels of wrong to be explaining this to Dean, to see Dean reacting like it's a surprise. He used to know. "Always have."

Dean shakes his head, cups Sam's face, and looks like he's going to kiss Sam but changes his mind at the last minute. "That's almost worse."

He does leave the bed then, gets into the one Sam hadn't even bothered unmaking, ruining the careful order and folding in on himself under the blankets, his back facing Sam.

Sam doesn't sleep, doesn't remember how to. He tosses from one side of the bed to another, wondering exactly how distressed he should be. This could be a stupid nightmare he's having, Dean could wake him up, and it'll be what today was supposed to be, and there won't be sunlight in the morning, maybe the motel will be shittier, or Dad will call and they'll wake up too early—but things will be the way they should be. Or maybe Dean will never remember, never forgive himself for letting Sam kiss him, never forgive Sam for doing it, either.

That's what worries him the most. When this was all new to them, Sam never had to see his brother nearly break into tears over what they were doing. Dean was slower to embrace it than he was, sure. He had his hesitations. But he didn't hate himself, at least Sam never thought so. They stumbled into it together, no room for guilt or shame, too much confusion and needing and sudden, irresistible happiness. 

What if Dean had been pretending all along, just trying to give Sam what he wanted? It's the Dean thing to do, but Sam had believed Dean's touches meant what they were supposed to. What if Dean has spent so long hating all of this, blaming himself, that he's finally snapped and erased the memories because he literally can't stand to think of it? What if Sam has been taking advantage of Dean for years and has been too happy to even notice?

Sam must fall asleep at some point, because he wakes up without Dean pressed against his back the next morning, and the day is just as bad as the one before.

Sam's decision is that he is not going to panic. Why panic? It's no big deal, really, not to anyone but him at least. No one else knows the information that has so conveniently fallen out of Dean's brain—no one wants to know—and Dean is fine without the knowledge, apparently. Besides, spells usually wear off after a short period, or as the distance between the person casting the spell and the victim increases, so Dean is bound to snap back into it soon. It won’t be the first time—or the second, or third, or tenth—that one of them gets hit by some asshat curse before they can stop the witch or wizard causing mischief.

Dean blacks out on the kiss they'd shared and Sam's "delusions" after a few days, same as he blacked out on their entire relationship. Sam is pretty sure this has to be willful, and he has no idea what prompted it, but clearly Dean is trying to forget, and Sam only pisses him off when he tries bringing it up.

So maybe this is Dean's method of self-preservation. Maybe he's getting used to not having Sam, weaning himself off slowly instead of going cold turkey, like Sam is some bad habit he knows he has to quit. It was Sam's decision to leave, he reminds himself. He shouldn't have just assumed Dean would agree to let him go quietly.

It's bad enough at first, when Dean reacts like he's been hit by lightning every time Sam touches him. Dean only forgets he's allergic to Sam when they're on a hunt. He calls Dad and reports, takes the blame for Sam's mistakes, doesn't meet Sam's eyes when he talks to their father, as if John will hear his desires over the phone line. None of that is new or affected. Dean is a mess over Sam, but he keeps forgetting just how much that goes both ways.

And of course, in grand Winchester fashion, it gets worse. Probably not actually worse, but definitely worse in the context of Sam being a selfish bastard. Dean is good at pretending—maybe not even pretending anymore—that he doesn't want Sam. Sam could deal with it better if Dean seemed put out about it, which he does for the first few days. But less and less every morning, until one day Sam realizes Dean is acting like a brother—like anyone's brother. His buddy who teases him and looks out for him and doesn't need him as much as he needs air. Just someone's brother. Sam's brother, Dean, who will get along just fine when Sam is gone.

Sam asked for this. Sam wanted Dean to be okay with him leaving. Sam made a choice. Sam fucking hates every single thing about it.

He can't call Dad, that much is obvious. This summer was supposed to be _theirs_. Dad's graduation present: Sam and Dean hunting together, no parental supervision. Choose their own hunts, make their own schedules. _I'm proud of you, Sam,_ Dad had said. _You earned it._ Something tells Sam the courtesy won't apply so much once John finds out the time they were supposed to spend becoming better hunters has mostly gone to clinging to each other, getting ready to say goodbye.

And it says something pretty stupid about Sam's mental state that he feels like this is the world's punishment for lying to his dad. It's not like John can conjure up amnesia, and if he could, he wouldn't go after Dean's memories of their incestuous relationship. Mostly because he would have already spontaneously combusted if he knew about it. Sam doesn't know much about the situation, but he knows this much: under no circumstances can John be involved, not until Sam at least knows what's going on.

But Sam is a trained hunter; he can deal with bad situations on his own. If Dad can't help him, he can wait it out, do some investigating. No chance he'll get caught as long as he doesn't let Dean know anything is up, which just means he has to keep his research for the Dean job mixed in with his research for whatever salt-and-burn they're chasing at the moment. It's not like Dean will touch that, even if Sam leaves a post-it note telling him to.

Especially not lately. Dean doesn't seem to care what the hell Sam does on his free time lately.

Sam collects his data. It happened all at once from what Sam can remember, all started on that morning he woke up and Dean shoved him out of bed. But things almost never happen that way, so Sam watches closely for hints.

It creeps Dean out, which is actually kind of amusing. Sam doesn't know what to pay attention to, so he leaves no stone unturned. Once upon a time, Sam digging through Dean's laundry or stealing his cereal and sifting through it might not have been that weird (Sam uses Dean's laundry when they need cleaning rags because Dean insists on living in filth, anyway, and Sam only ever stole cereal as a method of self-preservation—it's not like Dean needs all that sugar from his Lucky Charm marshmallows, and Sam is a growing boy), but that's the whole problem Sam is trying to straighten out. The behavior that used to get him a smack on the head, a wrestling match that would end with kissing on the floor, now earns him looks from Dean like Sam has three heads.

Which is distressing until Sam starts getting hysterical, and then it's just funny. And then it doesn't go away, and it gets distressing again, and Sam's research is going nowhere so fast even Dean would be impressed.

Next plan is to call Bobby. Dad still isn't an option, and while Bobby can't hear the whole story, Sam is a hell of a lot more likely to get a little sympathy out of him.

"The hell do you want?" Bobby grumbles on the other end of the line.

Sam smiles. It's been a long time since he's talked to anyone other than Dean, and it's nice to hear someone out there is still pretty much the same.

"Hey, Bobby," he says. "How are things?"

"Crappy."

Sam's smile only grows wider. "Tell me about it."

"How are ya, kid? Looking to find out if something new's in the mail from that school of yours? 'Cause I haven't gotten anything since you boys stopped by last month."

Sam shakes his head. "No, it's nothing like that."

"A hunt, then," says Bobby warily. "Trying to get me to do all the work for you?"

Sam laughs softly. "Well, yes and no."

"All right, spit it out. I ain't got all night."

"It's Dean," Sam says. "I think he's…cursed or…something."

"Cursed like how? Don't tell me he's a cat again. I told you boys when he used my Egyptian lore stack as a scratching post that I'm not helping next time it happens."

"Nothing that drastic," says Sam. "At least, I don't think."

"What's the problem?" Sam hears the top popping off a beer across the phone line and lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding. If Bobby's settling down, it means he's really going to hear Sam out.

"His memory. I don't know what exactly, something with his memories. He's forgetting…things."

"Forgetting? So it didn't happen all at once?"

Sam shrugs, even though Bobby won't see it, hoping the action will help him force some indifference into his words. "Maybe? He knows who he is, and who I am, what we do, Dad, all that stuff. He's mostly functional. It wasn't over-night-clean-slate or anything. But what is missing all slipped while he was sleeping."

"If he remembers all of that," Bobby says dubiously, "what can't he remember? Every episode of Baywatch that involves Pamela Anderson running?"

"That runs in his veins," Sam answers. Bobby snickers across the line. "I can't…it's hard to explain."

"It's hard to help a situation that ain't bein' explained."

"I know," Sam says. "I really can't explain, but I need some kind of help, Bobby. I'm desperate."

"Sam." Sam can practically see Bobby sitting back in his favorite chair, fussing with his baseball cap, trying to make sense of the situation. "I really need more to go—"

"It's me," Sam interrupts. "Bobby, he's forgetting _me_."

There's quiet for a long time on the other end, and Sam almost begins to wonder if Bobby hung up. "You boys come by here, okay?"

Sam breathes a sigh of relief. Bobby will know how to fix this, he has to. "Yes, sir," he says. "And Bobby?"

"Yeah?"

Sam winces before asking. "Could you…not tell my dad? At least not yet?"

Bobby makes an unsure sound, sighs, and finally says, "Fine, Sam." Sam is about to thank him when Bobby speaks again. "But don't you tell Dean, either."

"What do you mean?"

"Until we get this figured out, don't try to force him to remember things he's forgetting."

"Why not?" Sam asks.

"Has it been working so far?"

"Nah, it just pisses him off," Sam admits.

"A lot? More than something like that would usually bother him?"

"Huh," Sam says. He hadn't really thought of it, but, "Yeah, a lot more."

"Okay, that happens in some cases. Usually means telling him'll just confuse things, make it harder to fix."

Sam nods. "No telling Dean. Got it. Thanks so much, Bobby."

"If you really wanna thank me, go a week without needing me to save your ass," Bobby replies with false annoyance and then hangs up the phone.

"Tell me again why we're going to Bobby's?" Dean asks. He fiddles with the volume, and when Sam rolls his eyes at the AC/DC blasting through the speakers, Dean actually lowers it.

That probably shouldn't hurt Sam's feelings so much.

"I told you, man, hoping he has a new gig for us. I've got nothing."

"Let me see those newspapers. There's got to be _something_ that doesn't require driving to South Dakota. We were just there."

"There's not much else." Sam shrugs. "Just drive, jerk."

"All right, Sam," Dean says moodily.

Sam wonders if he should just write Dean a script and be done with it.

"Surprise!" Dean says cheerfully, holding up a six-pack of Budweiser and smiling wide.

Bobby glowers at him from the doorway. "There a reason you're on my porch?" he asks, casting a look at Sam for just a second. Sam nods to confirm and Bobby looks back to Dean with a critical eye.

"Princess back here got tired of looking for hunts." Dean shrugs, and Bobby moves aside for him. "We were hoping you could help us out."

"What's in it for me?" Bobby asks, following Dean as he mainlines for the refrigerator.

"Aside from our goodwill?" Dean asks, turning from slotting the beers onto the bottom shelf and grinning at Bobby. It's fond and open, exactly the way Dean usually looks at Bobby, and Sam wouldn't be surprised if he were literally turning green with envy. Worse things have happened. Weirder, too.

"Yeah, how about something useful?" says Bobby.

"What'd you have in mind?" Dean asks.

"I've got a job in Montana. Probably a ghoul, they think. Nothing too serious, maybe a one-man hunt, even."

"Anything a little bigger? Sam is on his retirement tour." Dean leans back on the counter, smiles proudly at Sam, isn't the least bit upset about the subject of Stanford.

"Nah, nothing. You know summer is prime hunting season. I just gave my last good job away."

Dean frowns. "See, Sam? Told you we should have called. We drove all the way out here for nothing."

"Well, now I'm flattered," Bobby mutters.

"Sorry, Bobby," Dean says. "Just think we could have saved you a little time."

"I got a better way to save me some time," Bobby says, and Sam knows he's not imagining the calculating look in his eyes. "Had a rushed job to help Caleb last week, we had to pull things off the shelf and I never got around to fixing up. My library's a damn wreck. Could use some help organizing things again."

Dean makes a terrified face, and Sam jumps in on his cue. "I'll help, Bobby," says Sam. "Sounds like a good opportunity to brush up on my lore."

"Loser," Dean says with gusto.

"Nah, it's all right. Dean won't stay around for that. You boys get on. I'm sure you'll find something."

"Dean can take the hunt," Sam says. "I'll stay here and help. We should finish around the time he gets back." Sam pauses and looks at Dean. "You can take the ghoul hunt alone, right?"

"Sure," Dean replies. "Sounds perfect."

Sam doesn't ask what part of separating during their last few months together is perfect. He knows he won't be able to stand it when Dean has an answer.

"Works for me," Bobby says. "Dean takes the hunt, Sammy can stay here with me."

Sam winces, not because he's bothered by Bobby calling him that, but because Dean hasn’t in a week and a half. Sam knows Bobby is probing Dean, trying to see just how deep it goes, and Dean hardly blinks.

"Careful, Bobby, you know how he hates nicknames," Dean says, ruffling Sam's hair as he heads for the exit.

Sam meets Bobby's eyes as soon as they hear the door closing behind Dean. "I see what you mean," is all Bobby says.

Bobby's library is no messier than usual when they're settling down to try and figure out what's going on. Sam wasn't expecting it to be but looks for something to clean, anyway.

"So start from the beginning," Bobby says. "The first thing he forgot."

Sam freezes with a stack of old manuscripts in his hands and feels his face burning. "Can I have a few minutes to make sure I can pinpoint it?" he asks.

"I thought you said it happened overnight?"

That's exactly what Sam said, of course, but he needs to find a way to frame 'woke up in bed with my brother and he wouldn't let me kiss him' in a way that won't cause aneurysms for anyone involved. "I said that's what it seemed like. Almost never actually happens that way, though, right?"

Bobby doesn’t smile, but Sam knows he wants to. "Someone put a good head on those shoulders, and it wasn't your daddy or that idjit brother of yours," he says.

Sam smiles. He sits in the chair behind Bobby's desk, idly sorting parchment into piles, and digs back to the morning this all started.

The night before, Sam realizes suddenly, Dean had been weirdly gentle, treated Sam like he was worried he would break him. Like it was the first time. Like it wasn't something they did, and Dean couldn't believe his luck. At the time, Sam thought he was just a little emotional, anticipating missing Sam or responding to a good day, and secretly Sam had liked it too much to question it. It was out of character, maybe, but it wasn't completely inexplicable. Now, though, now Sam remembers the same look on Dean's face from three years earlier—their real first times—and it makes a sick sense, ruins the whole damn memory.

He lets his face sink into his hands and groans.

"What's wrong, Sam? You finally think of something useful?"

Sam looks up at Bobby, eyes wide and no ability to say anything as dozens of instances from the last month roll through his mind. Dozens of little jokes Sam made that Dean just didn't laugh at, references to places they'd been that Dean couldn't quite distinguish from other places. And, fuck, Sam's been letting this happen since…

"May," Sam says. "May at the latest."

"Huh?"

"It must have already happened by the beginning of May. That's the first time he forgot something he shouldn't have."

"And you waited until June to phone a friend?" Bobby asks. "It's a wonder he can still tie his shoes."

Sam shakes his head. "No, it's…he's only forgetting things he did with me."

"That doesn't make any damn sense," Bobby says.

"You're right, it doesn't."

"What was it he forgot?" Bobby asks.

They'd been sitting in the kitchen of some place they were renting while Sam finished school, talking over breakfast about college. Dean had been staring at the counter too hard while he waited for Sam to finish his eggs so they could leave, and Sam had tried to distract him.

Fourth of July's in two months, he'd pointed out, and they should do something. It was their favorite holiday for obvious reasons, and this was going to be their last one together for at least four years, even if neither of them was saying as much. Sam suggested they find a field and light it up, like they had 'that one year,' and Dean had asked which year Sam was talking about without the slightest hint of playfulness or bitterness.

Sam had been a little heartbroken at the time, always thought Dean loved that memory as much as he did, but had dropped the subject and shoved the rest of his food away. And now? Sam is never going to be able to think of the Fourth of July fondly again.

"Fourth of July, 1996," Sam answers.

"The time you boys nearly got arrested?"

Sam nods.

Bobby coughs and looks down at his lap. "That is a bad sign."

They spend the next few hours sifting through Bobby's spell books and curse indexes with painful attention to detail, even follow a few fringier theories Bobby remembers about pagan gods and mischievous sprites.

"Maybe he'll just wake up and be better," Sam says, trying to keep himself awake with talking.

Bobby chuckles. "Your mother must have been a ray of sunshine, 'cause I know you didn't get that optimism from John."

When Dean gets back from the hunt, Sam and Bobby have exactly nothing to go on. Sam's asleep on his hand when Dean comes into the study, and Sam startles up on instinct, responding to the smell of graveyard dirt, gun powder, blood. He's spent a significant portion of his life waiting up to smell this, hear Dean's footfalls, and see his brother okay for at least a minute before letting himself go to bed.

So he's smiling drowsily when he lifts his head and sees Dean, filthy from the hunt in the archway to the study, wiping dirt on his jeans.

"Thinking we'll bunk for the night," he says to Bobby. "Am I good for a shower?"

"Yeah," Bobby says, sliding the thick volume he'd been studying into a desk drawer so Dean doesn't get a look at it. "Fine by me."

"How was the hunt?" Sam asks with a yawn.

Dean looks over at him for the first time since he got back and scowls for half a second. "Like you really care," he says, disappearing from view.

Sam rushes to follow, meets him at the stairs. "What was that supposed to mean?"

"You hate hunting, right? All it ever did was ruin your life?" Dean shrugs. "Pretty sure you don't actually care. And I need a shower."

He shoves past Sam and that's the last Sam hears from him that night.

Bobby's best advice in the morning is to try retracing their steps, see if he can remember the case they were working when Dean's memory first started to fizzle and figure out if that loosens up a few more pieces to the puzzle. Do his part for the case and report anything he finds to Bobby while Bobby mans the research.

While Dean is packing up the car and having breakfast with Bobby, Sam pours over every receipt he can find stashed in Dean's possessions. He plots out their known locations, and everything he finds points to Show Low, Arizona, a town about three hours away from where Sam spent his last month and a half of high school. It makes plenty of sense, they went on a few nearby hunts on the weekends, and Dean usually did his best to stay close so Sam wouldn't be late on Monday.

He doesn't remember any hunts that would explain the mess they're in, but surely going there will help Sam recall the specifics. He and Dean have been on a lot of hunts since the summer started, more than Sam is used to, and they're beginning to blur together. Truth be told, Sam hasn’t been paying enough attention to the cases, but at least _he_ can remember the time he's spent with his brother.

Dean knocks the idea away. Bobby sides with Sam when he trumps up some crap about a possible chupacabra in the desert, and Dean still refuses, seemingly entirely out of spite. He gives Bobby a warm goodbye and promises to think it over, consider it with a few other hunts he's had his eye on, hunts Sam knows for a fact don't exist.

Sam keeps asking, can't let the subject drop. He has to do his part to fix Dean, will hate himself forever if Bobby gets stuck with the burden.

"We were just in Arizona, Sam," he snaps as soon as they're in the car, pulling away from Bobby's. "We spent like two months trapped in some shithole town so you could finish school, and it's going to be hotter than Hell."

"There's a hunt, Dean. You remember hunting. People dying, gotta save 'em?"

"Lots of hunts between here and there. Lots of people to save. You don't even know for sure if this is real."

"It _seems_ authentic, and I'm not exactly a bad judge of these things," Sam argues. "What does it hurt us to check it out?"

"I just drove across the country because you wanted to bug Bobby for a case, and that hardly got us one. Now you want me to drive all the way across it in another direction on a hunch? Forgive me if my confidence—and patience—are wearing a little thin right now."

"I don't see how it's any different from—"

"Look, Sam, you can make all the tough life decisions you want when you go off to your fancy school. Until then, I'm calling the shots."

Dean reaches for the volume and blasts his shitty music even louder, and Sam has no choice but to shut up about it and watch the landscape pass his window as Dean drives in the wrong direction.

Always, always worse. Sam forgets that sometimes, but he's got it straight now. It can always get worse for them. Right now, he doesn't see how, but yesterday he thought the same thing, and tomorrow, he will look back on this and think he had it easy. Sam just knows it.

After Bobby's, Dean is different yet again. He starts getting nasty—actually being mean to Sam. If asked a month ago, Sam would have said Dean wasn't capable of it.

Dean's a capable guy, though, and he's generally pretty good at whatever he actually bothers to try for. Hurting Sam is something he never had to try for, he could have done it easily if he'd ever wanted to.

Everything Sam ever believed in crumbles at the realization. Dean has always had a pretty low opinion of himself, but Sam has known better. For all his faults, he was always good, better than anyone is supposed to be—better than Sam, as much as Dean would have laughed if Sam had said so out loud. If Sam was ever good, Dean made him that way. Sam had never for a moment considered Dean might have depended on him, too. But this Dean? This brother who isn't a brother, who never had Sam to look after, or play with, or care for, who only had fights and loneliness? Dean isn't a good person like this.

It starts off so quietly it's just an itch Sam won't scratch. Dean is sniping him. Mean little comments like the ones at Bobby's, either trying to get a rise or maybe Dean just doesn't know what else to say. But if Dean is starting to hate him, Sam does not want to know. So he takes the hits quietly, absorbs like a sponge while Dean is watching and doesn't let his face falter until the lights are out and his pillow provides a place to hide.

After the comments, Dean starts pulling away a little more literally. He goes out to get supplies on his own, spends time fixing the car when they could be hanging out, devotes his nights to bar crawling, coming home drenched in someone Sam hates on principle's perfume.

Dean has every right to go out and find girls, of course, now that he is oblivious to the way things were before. He's been doing it since the amnesia or whatever settled in, and while it's definitely been bothering Sam, it frankly ranks pretty low on the list of things that are registering right now. It's less painful than Dean not wanting him, Dean not looking at him like he's anything other than a lump of flesh that shares his blood and living space.

But Sam knows when his brother is being nasty. It's not like they never fought, even before, it's not like Dean didn't try this exact same trick when they'd first started messing around and Dean wanted to do something to make Sam not want him. Dean's parading the girls, making sure Sam knows what he does with them, smiling when Sam frowns, until he wants nothing in the world except to curl up and cry. He used to have someone to cry to, someone who would laugh at him, roll him off his bed, call him a girl until Sam was pissed but distracted from whatever was bothering him. And now instead of running to Dean, it's Dean he wants to run from.

Sam ignores the girls, but he can't ignore Dean playing with him, exactly the way he accused Sam of doing the first day he started to forget. He knows Sam wants him, that much is obvious, and he's using it against Sam. He's shameless, trumpeting his escapades, coming out of the shower with a towel wrapped around him, bare flesh that used to belong to Sam all marked up from people he knows Dean no longer remembers.

It's ugly. Even for Winchesters, it's low.

Sam doesn't really have to question why Dean is behaving this way. He doesn't know what the fuck is going on with Dean's brain, can't guess what goes when, or how fast it's slipping, or if it will ever stop and at what point. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to find a pattern, and there's a big one with the way Dean's memory goes. He loses the best things first, every night he sleeps off a few more good memories, and by now all Dean seems to remember are a few of their nastier fights, the times Sam hated hunting, all the times Sam clashed with Dad.

Then one day, Dean gets a dark look in his eyes. Dean may not like Sam, but the want that Sam missed for a few weeks is suddenly back. Dean lingers on their rare touches, watches Sam, knows when Sam is watching him.

Lust, Sam can read that on his brother's face by now, but he doesn't understand what the hell it's doing there. For Dean to want him now, Dean would have to be even worse than Sam's suspected. It doesn't seem excusable, wanting your brother, not anymore. Not like this.

Sam probably shouldn't be so thrown off the night Dean shoves him into the motel wall so hard his head hurts when it hits, and Sam doesn't know if he's going to get punched or kissed. It's actually more distressing when Dean _does_ kiss him.

Sam grabs at him, lets Dean move in close and rock against him, until they're both gasping and coming, still dressed from the road and not even all the way inside the room. Sam shouldn't have done that, but it's been so long since he tasted Dean that he didn't know how stop it.

Dean shoves him away, wipes at his mouth and looks at Sam like it was his idea (and maybe it was at first, but Dean doesn't know that anymore). 

"The fuck?" Sam asks, not having to fake the anger in his voice.

Dean shrugs. "Didn't hear you complaining."

"You—you did it though." Sam gesticulates wildly. "You can't just—you're my—"

"What, brother? Some brother you are," says Dean. "All you ever did was fight, leave, or want to leave. Forgive me for not getting sentimental." Dean doesn't even really sound that upset. There's a hint of resentment—it even sounds like years of resentment. But it's detached. Matter of fact.

He thinks back on Dean when this all started, _his_ Dean, who maybe didn't know about this part of them, but Sam couldn't care less about that now, he'd give anything to have that Dean back. Dean, who looked at him like he was worth too much to ruin. Dean, who almost cried when Sam had tried to do this to him, even though he hadn't cried when he'd been cut up on hunts or watched people die.

His words echo now in Sam's memory, he can still hear Dean's wavering, miserable voice. _I wouldn't have touched you. Not ever._ That was less than two weeks ago, and already Dean has forgotten he cares about Sam so much he doesn't bat an eye over the possibility of fucking Sam up for life.

"I need a shower," Sam says, shoving past Dean none-too-gently. He still feels filthy after half an hour under the spray, but when Dean kisses him again the next night, Sam jerks him fast and dirty and doesn't try to stop Dean from returning the favor.

Sam doesn't want to think about the kind of person he is, what it says about Dean and him that they still do these things. He'd thought, once upon a time, that they were fucked up, yes, broken past the point of all correction, assuredly, but reassembled. Poorly reassembled, fragile, it didn't matter. They held each other together, glue in shattered dishware—you could see the cracks, but you went on using it, anyway.

Sam was used to it. To the point where trying to imagine something normal, or healthy, whatever the fuck word someone outside looking in would want to use, would never be good enough. He'd thought, like some stupid child, that he and Dean only did the things they did because it was right for them. Because they were in love and it was beautiful for them.

But they're doing this, and there's nothing like love in Dean's kisses, and Sam can't stop.

They make quick work of it. Sam waits for Dean, ready for him, no one whispers anything pretty. They're dead silent except for panting, the slap of skin on skin, the mattress voicing their discomfort for them. Sam hates it, but the nights Dean doesn’t come to him, he doesn't hesitate in bridging the distance.

Dean doesn't worry if it's good for Sam—he doesn't need to, it's always good for Sam, but that's not the point. Dean is using him, takes no pains to hide it. He gets off, and then he moves on. It shouldn't be a surprise at all, Dean was always dismissive to the people he fucked. Now he's fucking Sam.

Sam knows why he's doing it, why he won't be able to stop Dean no matter how wrong things are getting, because he will take literally anything his brother will throw at him that lets him pretend he still has Dean. But Dean—Dean can't stand Sam, and Sam might have always suspected that Dean only cared about him because he had to, but this goes beyond that. If Sam is a compulsion to Dean, he might not have even really loved Sam when he still loved Sam.

When the need to know gets to be too much, Sam caves and asks.

"I don't know," Dean says quietly as he's trying to get away. Sam holds him fast, pulls him back towards the bed. "I don't know why I want you, Sam. It's messed up and I know that and I can't stop wanting you. It's like a pull."

Sam lets go of him, nodding quietly. 

"Why do you do it?" Dean asks.

Sam laughs, rolling over in bed. "You wouldn't understand if I told you."

Sam learns how to push him away after that.

A few more days pass in miserable silence. Dean loses all interest in Sam when Sam stops agreeing to fool around, and then it's just hostile glances and avoidance. When Sam speaks, Dean looks up, jarred, like he'd forgotten Sam existed, and says something about being surprised Sam doesn't have somewhere better to be.

Dean stops expecting sex—though he doesn't ever seem to want it any less—and Sam knows after a week that Dean has, once again, forgotten. It's weird, watching him lose even those ugly parts of their relationship, not being able to stop what he knows is coming. Someday, not far off, Dean is going to forget him altogether.

As soon as the thought hits him, he runs back to Dean, kisses him, begs to be fucked, doesn't care that it's all wrong. And when they're done, Sam lies against his brother and cries, and Dean is too confused by the behavior to tell him to take his temper tantrum somewhere else.

To Sam's surprise, Dean's arm wraps around his shoulder after a while—loose, but a dim attempt at comfort. He pulls away to look at Dean, has the insane hope that it's all coming back and things will be okay. Dean's expression is unreadable. Sad, definitely, and maybe even sorry, but not soft.

"I bet you don't remember, Sam." Dean reaches a finger out and collects a tear from Sam's cheek. "When you were really little," he says. He rubs the tear out between his thumb and index finger and doesn't look at Sam. "I used to take care of you. It sucked. It was scary and hard and I hated that Dad was never around, but you let me take care of you, and I really loved it. It used to hurt when you cried."

"What happened?" Sam asks. "What do you think happened?"

Dean shrugs. "You got old enough not to need it. Didn't stick around much once you could get away, did you?"

Sam shakes his head, dropping it onto Dean's chest. "I remember," he whispers.

"Why are you crying?" Dean asks. "If you're having some panic attack over leaving, I don't know that I'm the person you want to cry to."

"Not about leaving," Sam says. "Just leaving you."

"You've spent the last 18 years trying to leave me," Dean accuses. "It'll be better for both of us when you finally get it over with."

"No. You're wrong. You're so wrong. About me. Us. You don't remember what it used to be like," Sam babbles. "I remember everything."

"Yeah, well, what's that matter now? If you remember, that just means it didn't mean shit to you, which I already knew."

Sam kisses him, doesn't care that Dean doesn’t kiss back, or that he can taste more salt than Dean in the kiss. Dean is even more confused when Sam pulls away, and he looks angry. "I don't get it," he says. "Just go to bed."

"Let me stay, Dean," Sam begs, holding on tighter. "I swear, I appreciate everything you ever did for me. I'm sorry that's not…I'm sorry things don't seem that way, but you can't hate me."

"I don't hate you," he says, chilly indifference that screams 'you aren't worth hating.'

"Like me," Sam begs. "Since you don't hate me, just like me, okay? Remember this, I'm telling you right now. I remember, Dean, I appreciated it, you don't know how much. So please, please, just pretend to like me until I can convince you that you really do." He loses his voice then, but forces the words out. "I'll stay. For that, I promise I'll never leave."

Dean laughs briefly above him, but he squeezes Sam's shoulder. "Okay, whatever, Sam."

It's the best he can hope for, so he rests his head, and closes his eyes, and tries not to let himself think about the fact that Dean won't remember this in the morning.


	3. Part 2: Wake Up Alone

Sam has to wonder, when the blade finally falls, why it comes as such a shock.

He knew this was going to happen, but that doesn't make him ready for it. Nothing could ever have made him ready. And maybe a little piece of him was still stupid enough to believe that whatever was out there holding everything together—God, mystical forces, plain unyielding science—whatever it was, it couldn't do this.

Dean wakes up before Sam and shakes him until he opens his eyes. He doesn't look pissed at Sam for being there, which either means everything is going back to normal and justice has prevailed, he somehow remembers what Sam said last night and has actually decided to believe it, or Dean has no idea who he is and Sam's entire life is over.

He's putting his money on the last option.

"Dean?" he asks, rubbing his face against Dean's chest.

Dean laughs awkwardly. "Well, this is embarrassing."

Sam sits up and shakes his head. "Don't say it, okay? You don't remember my name, I get it."

He stumbles out of bed and pulls the first shirt he sees on the floor over his head, and Dean is looking around for boxers when Sam turns back around.

"Uh," Dean begins. "Did we?" He swallows hard. "Oh, man. We totally did, didn't we?"

Sam kicks into his jeans and laughs at Dean. "You do the math."

"Ah," he says. "I'm not—I mean, I don't with guys."

"You did last night," Sam replies bitingly. "You'll get over it."

Dean shrugs. "I'm over it, it's just weird. And I don't remember anything."

"Sure that's not a first for you." Sam decides to go with the obvious lie for the sake of simplicity. "You were pretty drunk. We both were."

"You sure you're old enough for that?" Dean asks, putting on a shirt Sam throws him.

"You sure that's any of your business?"

Dean shrugs. "I feel weirdly okay for someone who blacked out."

"That makes one of us," Sam replies.

"Look, if you need to shower or anything before you go, you're totally welcome."

"Didn't peg you for such a gentleman."

"Knight in shining armor." Dean smiles in a way Sam knows a million girls have fallen on their knees for. He's never done it to Sam, and Sam really does feel sick.

"Yeah," Sam says. He at least needs to splash some cold water on his face before trying to get through today.

He takes the longest shower he thinks he can get away with before finding his way back out to the room. Dean is sitting up on his bed, a coffee from the motel lobby in his hand and another on the nightstand.

"Hey," he says. "I don't have any aspirin or anything, but I thought the coffee might help?"

"Thanks," Sam says, dropping his dirty clothes in the open duffle on his unused mattress. Sam doesn't actually really like coffee, which Dean should know, and on the rare occasion he does indulge, he never takes it black like Dean does.

He takes a sip now, though, just to have something to do, and decides that the bitter taste is supposed to be poetic. They stand in uneasy silence for so long Sam's surprised the air doesn't choke them. Finally, Dean fidgets and decides to speak.

"I'm Dean," says Sam's brother. "Dean Winchester."

"Sam," he replies.

"You got a last name?" Dean jokes.

"No."

Dean waits for Sam to laugh, but it's not really a laughing matter. "All right, then," he says awkwardly. "You're, uh, not the most pleasant person I've ever woken up next to."

Sam blows on his coffee sulkily and doesn't bother to respond.

"Was it bad?" Dean asks. "I was pretty drunk, right? No one's a good fuck when they're that far out of it. But I can make that up to you."

Sam raises an eyebrow. "I thought you weren't gay."

"I'm not," Dean insists. "It's not about whether I like dick or not. Now it's a matter of pride. And I am an awesome fuck, thank you very much."

Sam huffs a laugh. "It wasn't bad," he says softly.

Dean lets out a long, relieved breath. "Okay, good stuff. Because I really didn't wanna have to go there." He shifts. "No offense."

"Of course not."

Dean smirks. "Well, uh. Thanks, I guess? For…whatever happened last night? Shouldn't you be running home now?"

Sam's face falls. Of course Dean would ask that. Sam hadn't thought of this part at all. Just where the hell is he going to go until Dean remembers? What if Dean never remembers? Sam has a room carved out for him in two and a half months, but he can't just leave Dean like this, and even if he could, there's the rest of June, July, and August to consider.

"Where?" he asks, out loud though it's really intended for himself.

Dean looks away. "I don't know, kid. That's not really my business."

Sam nods slowly, accepting it because he's been trampled so many times at this point he can hardly feel it anymore. He grabs his duffel off the spare bed and shoulders it, heading for the door.

Dean catches his wrist as he's about to open the door. "Look, I'm not trying to be an asshole here, I just have work to do. Is there somewhere I can drop you off?"

Sam shakes his head, shakes Dean's hand away, too. "I'm on my own," he says.

Dean's face is confused and maybe even sad when Sam shuts the door on it. He wanders for half an hour or so, until he finds himself just outside of the town their case is in. He drops his duffel somewhere on the side of the road, sits on it, and cries into his hand until the sun gets to be too hot.

Sam takes out his phone, because now is when he calls his dad. John needs to know this, Sam shouldn't have let it go this far to begin with. But his thumb hesitates over the send button when he pulls up John's number, and he can't bring himself to do it. If he calls now, he's going to freak John out even more than necessary—Sam is a mess right now. He takes a shaky breath and slides his phone into his pocket. He'll call Dad in a few hours, once he's cooled down a little.

He decides to go on with the hunt. If he can beat Dean to the haunting, he can salt and burn the ghost on his own. For once in his life, that's all he wants: an easy job to keep his hands busy and his brain muted. He feels like hurting something; Dad would be proud of how much he craves this kill.

After, he figures he'll spend the night walking back. Hopefully he has enough money in his duffel to afford a room for the night. He'll shadow Dean for a few more days, get a little bit more info, then go back to Bobby's and figure out this mess no matter what it takes.

Surprisingly, he does beat Dean to the hunt. Dean probably got held up finalizing research, never something he's been efficient at. Sam bypasses that step; research is for people who care if they come out breathing.

The ghost isn't hard to lure out. Sam finds the watch the girl they'd spoken with had described after ten minutes in the house, and as soon as his fingers are on it, Grandpa flickers in and begins to cause trouble. It's petty stuff—he throws some books Sam's way, then flips the mattress, then gets really pissed and knocks some pens off the desk, sending the mug they were in to a premature death. Sam kind of has to laugh at it, almost feels bad wasting a ghost this pathetic.

He finishes with the remains of the grandfather's watch and thinks the job is done, earlier than he would have liked. Of course, that's when Grandma shows up.

She's been dead longer, Sam remembers that, which makes her stronger if she's been a ghost this whole time. Sam wonders if maybe he made a big mistake—if Grandpa wasn't the ghost killing people at all and he'd only been trying to warn Sam. Oops.

She rattles the bookshelf before she's even done materializing, and Sam hardly has enough time to duck under his arm before heavy volumes are raining down on him. Sam knows the bookshelf itself will come next, and he has no fucking idea what he's supposed to burn in order to gank her.

"Pillow!" Sam hears, and he thinks he's hallucinating, because it sounds like Dean, coming in on the hunt at the last minute to save him, like he always has. Definitely what Sam would imagine at a time like this, but it's the best lead he has, so he doesn't even think about it—dodges the shelf, ends up having to pull a fast one to miss being knocked out by the lamp hurtling across the room.

He lands on the mattress and makes a desperate crawl. The ghost catches his ankle but screams and lets go almost immediately, and Sam doesn't stop to wonder why she's doing that, he heard the iron swinging in his brother's hands behind him. He's got the embroidered pillow proclaiming "World's Best Grandmother" bathed in salt and gasoline in seconds.

He lights it, waits until the fire catches, and drops it on the floor, away from the mattress. He hears a cry like nails on a chalkboard, sees blue flames out of the corner of his eyes.

Sam drops onto the mattress then, realizing as the adrenaline begins to fizzle out that the lamp caught his shoulder and now that he's not trying to survive the fight, it begins to complain.

He grips the shoulder, gauging how bad it is. Nothing's out of place, no need to pop anything back in, but the bruise will be bugging him for weeks.

"You okay?"

Sam shakes his head and looks up, and there's Dean, mother-henning as usual. Sam waves him away with the arm that isn't injured. "Fine, just a little—"

The mattress dips as Dean sits next to him, and Sam only realizes it's not a third ghost when his hand pulls the sleeve of Sam's t-shirt up enough to inspect the damage. "Should be all right," Dean says.

"I know, Dean, I'm just being a baby."

Dean's eyes widen when he hears his name, and he looks at Sam for the first time since the ghosts went out. "Holy shit," he says. "It's you."

"And who might that be?" Sam asks, mouth quirking.

"Sam, right?" Dean waits until Sam nods. "What are you doing here?"

"Same thing you were doing, only I was better at it."

Dean shakes his head, but he's smiling. "Yeah right, man, I wouldn't have gotten injured by the little old lady."

"Blow me," Sam replies. "Old ladies are crazy."

Dean laughs. "So you're a hunter, too?"

"Sure looks like it," Sam replies, standing.

"Wow," Dean says.

"Yeah," Sam answers sourly. "Imagine that."

He rolls his shoulder, winces a little, and tries to figure out what he can and cannot do comfortably. Once he's got a grip on it, he tries to make a break for the door.

"Hey, wait," Dean says. "Where are you going?"

"I don’t know, kid," says Sam, doing his best Dean impression. "It's not really your business."

"C'mon, don't be like that!" Dean puts a hand on Sam's good shoulder. "I was trying to keep some innocent teenager from getting tangled up in my shit. Looks like you're already pretty deep in it, though."

"Heh, I'll say." Sam looks pointedly at the ashes from the pillow on the floor. "Job well done. Thanks for the help. See you around."

"Just like that?" Dean asks.

"Just like what?"

"We knock out a hunt together in record time and you're just going to say 'see you around' and leave?"

"Isn't that what you wanted?" Sam asks, ignoring the erroneous comment about this being record time, because he and Dean have gotten much bigger jobs done much faster working together. Still, this wasn't bad.

"Nah," Dean says. "I mean, we can at least talk a little, trade information. It's never bad to have a new contact."

"My number's in your phone." Sam pulls his cell out of his pocket and brings up Dean's information. "And yours is in mine."

"I guess I was really friendly last night, huh?"

Sam looks down at his phone, clicking some buttons to distract himself. "Call it what you want."

"So we've swapped information. But you have to eat at some point. What's a little company gonna hurt?"

He imagines the sheer awkwardness of sitting across the table from Dean, on some kind of date, listening to his brother, best friend, everything tell him about a life that never happened, completely blissfully void of bratty little brothers and abandonment issues. A lot is the answer. It would hurt a lot. But so would walking away.

Sam shrugs. "Saw a diner up the road from that motel we stayed in. Advertised a two-for-one."

Dean's lips curl up. "I like you already."

He doesn't order for Dean, and after twenty seconds of awkward silence, he realizes he shouldn't be waiting for Dean to order for him. Dean doesn't ask for extra onions on his bacon cheeseburger, and Sam gets irrationally annoyed, wondering if the only reason Dean ever developed a fondness for them was to piss Sam off.

"So you're not half bad, you know," Dean tells him when he's tearing into his burger. "You could have thought things out better, but you're faster than most hunters I've seen on a job, especially for your age."

"I had a good teacher," Sam answers, French fry dragging idly through ketchup and never making it to his mouth. "Well, two good teachers," he adds grudgingly.

"Who?"

"My brother and my dad."

"Raised in the life, huh?" Dean asks. 

"Thought it would be obvious."

Dean nods. "Yeah, I figured." He sits back. "Look at that. We've got plenty in common already."

"I wouldn't say that." Sam takes a contrary sip from his soda, and Dean glances at him, half-smirking. Amused by Sam's pissy display, apparently.

"I had a pretty great teacher myself," he says. "My dad, too."

"Uncanny," Sam murmurs. He stabs his lettuce violently, enjoys watching the dressing bleed through the punctures in the leaves.

"So why weren't they working this case with you?" Dean asks. "Not that I'm saying you can't handle yourself, because you clearly can. But you're a little young to be going it alone if you don't have to."

"I'm 18. Plenty old enough to be on my own."

"Doesn't mean you should be."

Sam scoffs. "You’re not that much older than me, why're you on your own?"

"I'm not," Dean replies with a smile. "My dad's looking after me. I couldn't be safer."

Sam laughs bitterly, and Dean pulls back, looking disconcerted by Sam's response. "I didn't see him back there."

"He's got better shit to do than hold my hand on some salt-and-burn. He's in Montana working a much bigger job than anything I'm taking on."

"How's he supposed to look after you, then?"

Dean shakes his head. "You don't know my dad. Trust me, kid, I couldn't be safer."

"Somehow, I doubt that."

"You don't have any right to," Dean replies with the familiar don't-question-Dad edge.

"My dad dumped me on my brother," Sam replies. "And we were fucked."

Dean frowns. His hand reaches forward, hesitates, and pulls back. "I'm sorry, Sam. That's awful."

It's not John's fault, Sam knows that. But Sam needs a scapegoat, and he can't chase the thought away. If they were with Dad, nothing would have touched Dean. If Sam had been less concerned with being happy, more concerned with being safe, his brother wouldn't be looking at him like some lost puppy he's worried won't get adopted.

"It is what it is." Sam looks up. "I'm sorry. What it definitely is not is your problem."

"What about your broth—?"

Sam feels his eyes burning again. He closes them to force the tears to stay in and thinks Dean would be proud of how easy the deceptive calm in his voice sounds, if Dean still existed. "Don't ask that question."

Dean nods. "Fair enough."

"I'm awful company today," Sam says after a long spell of silence. "I swear I'm usually not—"

"It's okay, man." Dean smiles wide and waves over the waitress. "Sugar, I think we need the two biggest slices of apple pie you have in this fine establishment."

She jots it down, looking bored and entirely uncharmed by Dean's best, and heads to the bake case.

"What if I don't like apple pie?" Sam asks.

"First of all, that would make you some kind of monster, in which case I'll waste you when I'm done eating." He smiles beautifully, and Sam can't decide if he wants to kiss Dean or stab him. He sits on his hands just in case. "Second, who said either piece was for you?"

He winks when the waitress sets the plates down in front of them and watches closely until Sam takes a bite.

"Good, right?" he asks, spooning a huge chunk off his own plate.

Dean hasn't even tried it yet, but Sam knows Dean's greatest talents lie in fucking, hunting, and judging pie quality, so he doesn't ask how Dean can be so sure.

"Yeah," Sam replies, though he makes sure not to smile. No way is he letting some baked goods improve his mood. That would be giving Dean exactly what he wants.

"I've been hunting since I was four," Dean proclaims proudly, giving Sam the spiel he's given every fellow-hunter they've met, shared a meal with, and forgotten. "Some thing got my mom, my dad and I have been tracking it since."

Sam nods, stares very hard at the crust of his pie. If he pretends to be fascinated, he's sure his brain will just forget to listen to Dean's deluded crap.

"How about you?"

"Huh?" Sam asks, looking up from the crumbs on his plate, realizing he's supposed to be engaged in conversation.

"Everyone has an in," Dean says. "You don't just wake up a hunter. How'd you guys get in? You didn't mention a mother, did…I mean, is she—?"

"Dead? Yes," Sam replies. Dean looks sorry and Sam reaches out, squeezes his hand. "Dean, I was so young I don't even almost remember her. Believe me, I've got issues, that's not really one of them."

"Oh," he says. "I miss mine."

"I know you do," Sam blurts out. "I mean, I can tell."

Dean looks threatened for a minute, and Sam realizes he should have known Dean wouldn't like some stranger being able to read him. Some stranger, he tells himself again, just to nail it in. That one is going to have to stick eventually if he's going to get through this without Dean thinking he's possessed and lugging him to Bobby's for an exorcism.

"That's why we got into the hunt, too," Sam says, covering his ass. "My brother, he missed my mom a lot."

Dean relaxes. "Older brother, then?"

"We're not talking brothers," Sam replies. "We're talking moms."

"I'd rather talk brothers," says Dean.

"I won't." Sam takes a long sip from his nearly empty cup just because the slurping sound drives Dean crazy. Dean flinches, and Sam smiles to himself, basking in the things he can depend on.

"It's a good life, though," Dean says. "Dad and I have a lot of fun."

"That's very nice for you," Sam replies, making it clear the feeling is not shared on his end.

Dean's mouth falls open. "Don't tell me you actually don't enjoy hunting!"

"Hate it." Sam wipes a napkin over his mouth, bunches it up, and throws it at Dean. "And don't give me that look."

"I've been sitting at this table with a heathen," Dean says dramatically.

Sam laughs.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Sam looks at Dean then, and Dean is watching him with warm eyes. "What wasn't so hard?"

"Smiling a little," Dean answers. "That's the first real one I've gotten all day."

"And the last."

"Nah, I'm a ray of sunshine."

Sam nearly snorts. "You're a ray of bullshit."

"Ultraviolet rays," Dean replies, still smiling. "You've got a nice smile, kid," he says. "You should try it more. Makes your flaring nostrils less noticeable."

"Ugh, fuck off." Sam is failing at wiping the smile away, though. "At least I don't look like a girl."

"I am all man," Dean answers. When Sam only laughs, Dean scowls. "I am so much man, you don't even know what to do with it."

"Yeah, and you take it up the ass like a champ."

Dean nearly chokes on the sip of water he'd been taking; Sam relaxes back onto his side of the booth, clearly victorious. "Did I seriously do that?" he asks, wide-eyed. "Seriously?"

"Unsolved mysteries," Sam answers. "You'll never know. You'll die not knowing."

"Ice queen," Dean replies, pursing his lips and nodding. "I can respect that."

"It's so nice to be respected in the morning," says Sam, inwardly asking just what the hell he thinks he's doing, sitting at a diner flirting with his amnesiac brother.

Dean hides his face in his hand. "Oh man, respected in the afternoon. In the morning I was having a little bit of a sexuality crisis."

"Over it already?"

Dean shrugs. "Didn't feel as alarming as I thought it should. Not that I want to jump on the dick train or anything."

"Never say 'dick train' to me again."

"Deal." Dean reaches across the table and refuses to withdraw until Sam shakes on it. "So your dad and you fighting…does that have to do with…?"

"Awkward conversation topics for $600, Alex."

Dean throws his head back on a laugh. "I just know a lot of hunters wouldn't be thrilled about, you know, that. My dad sure wouldn't."

"The fact that I'm gay?" Sam asks. "It's okay, Dean, the big scary word won't bite you and make you gay, too. Or, well, gay _er_."

"Not gay," Dean insists again.

"My dad doesn't know. And if I don't want to die before I get to college, my dad will never know."

"College?" Dean asks with a raised eyebrow.

Sam ducks his head. "Yeah, I'm starting in the fall. That's a lot more what we don't get along about. He doesn't know I'm actually going, but he's pretty regularly annoyed that I want to."

"That's totally screwed," says Dean. "He should be proud of you. Hunting—it's not something you do unless you're choosing it."

"It's complicated," Sam defends. "But mostly I agree. That's why I'm leaving."

"Good for you." Dean lifts his drink to his lips. "No offense, man, but your dad sounds like a douche."

Sam laughs at the irony, at how blind Dean is to John's flaws. Then he feels a sharp pang, wonders if he were in Dean's shoes, listening to the starry-eyed speech Sam knows will come when he asks about Dean's dad, if he would go along with Dean's perspective just as easily.

"I think I made him sound worse than he deserves. To be fair, he didn't actually abandon us. He gave us a summer to do our own thing, and it was everything I ever wanted." Sam smoothes his fingers over the napkin he's laid out on the table. "Until it wasn't."

Dean bites the inside of his cheek and calls the waitress over for the check. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know." Sam's eyes just hardly manage to stay on Dean's. "I'm too scared to tell him how badly I fucked up. He's all I've got left."

Dean looks away before Sam does, and Sam realizes he's burdening Dean. Burdening Dean with problems he's not ready to face. And isn't that a terrifying thought. Dean isn't a bad guy like this, not like he was when he'd only mostly forgotten Sam. But he's nothing like that Dean, or any Dean Sam is used to. When he smiles or laughs, it rings true, doesn't hit any walls and echo back, reminding Sam that, even at the best of times, neither of them will really be okay.

Nothing really bad has happened to him, aside from the job (which never bothered Dean the way it bothers Sam), since his mother died. He never had to worry that his little brother wouldn’t get enough to eat or put up with Sam’s teenage bouts of ungrateful rebellion or hate himself for wanting things he isn’t allowed to want. Dean is a blank slate with dead eyes and a perfect, flat smile.

Sam's voice chokes up. "I've got nothing," he says as it hits him just how alone he is now.

Dean kicks him under the table and is uncharacteristically earnest when Sam looks up. "Do you wanna split a room tonight?" he asks. "It'll be cheaper." Less lonely goes unsaid.

Sam nods, knows he shouldn't, but he needs his big brother, he needs that so much it actually hurts. "I'm not gonna kill myself or anything," he says, wiping at his eyes. "I know I seem unstable, but…"

"Hey." Dean moves to sit next to Sam on his side of the booth, puts an arm around him, squeezing the good shoulder. "Look, man, I could use a friend, too. Might as well stick together, at least for a little while."

Sam nods and draws closer to Dean.

"After bedding the hottest guy in town and stealing my hunt, what was your plan, anyway?"

Sam looks up from his McDonald's hash brown and grins. "That was my hunt," he informs Dean. "I found it before you did."

Dean shrugs, biting into his breakfast sandwich. "If you can't prove it, it's not true."

"That's a really terrifying thought," he says, words directed down, as if he's conversing with his potato instead of his brother.

"Starting to think you're avoiding my question," Dean says, turning to face him.

Sam smiles, then reaches out to wipe at Dean's cheek. "You have some egg on your face, ugly."

"Jealousy doesn't really suit you, Sammy."

Sam nearly chokes on the food in his mouth. It's not weird, hearing that from Dean, but it's never sounded quite so meaningless before. Dean likes giving nicknames, that's just what he does. But that—that's not a nickname as far as Sam is concerned. Not coming from Dean.

"Don't call me that," he says, though he never expected to have to say that to Dean, not seriously.

Dean shrugs. "Sorry?"

"No, it's okay," Sam mimics his brother's indifference. "Nicknames just piss me off."

Dean bunches up the wrapper from his breakfast and shoves it in the paper bag, wiping his mouth and hands off on a napkin before touching the steering wheel. "Okay, Samuel. My question stands."

"Sam really that hard to say?" Dean makes an exasperated noise, and Sam smiles. "Sorry, could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening."

"You're a pain in my ass," says Dean.

Sam blinks at him innocently. "Thought you didn't remember that." 

"Har har," Dean replies, starting the car. "Do you want me to drive you somewhere or not?"

"I don't really have much in the way of a plan," Sam admits. "I was heading to Show Low, Arizona, I heard there might be a job that way. How about you?"

"Didn't really have a plan, either. Figured I'd stumble on something eventually."

"That's how you go through life, huh?"

Dean grins in a way that makes Sam's body heat up immediately. "I like to play fast and loose," he says, as if Sam doesn't know that. "How were you planning to get to Arizona without a car, anyway?"

Sam looks up at Dean, attempting a coy expression. "I may not like it, but I know how to play fast and loose."

"You delinquent." Dean beams. "You were totally gonna steal one."

"If you can't prove it, it's not true," Sam echoes. "I think I read that somewhere. Or maybe someone told it to me…"

"Whoever it was, they sound wise."

"Whoever it was, they sound like a jackass."

Dean pretends to sob into his hands, then peeks out at Sam. "Aren't you going to apologize?"

"I hadn't planned on it, no." Sam finishes his hotcakes and puts the cover on before dumping them in the trash bag. Dean looks on with approval, apparently impressed that Sam managed the meal without getting syrup on his upholstery. It's equal parts annoying and endearing. "Let me trash this stuff and we can get out of here?"

Dean nods. Sam notices him watching closely through the window when he's walking back. "What?" he asks as he slides into his seat.

"I just got a kind of crazy thought," Dean says.

"Well, at least there's something going on up there."

Dean rolls his eyes.

"What was it?" Sam asks.

"So, uh, feel free to say no here, but my dad always said it was better to hunt with a partner, so…I could use a good hunter around. We could watch each other's backs. Just until you go to school, obviously."

"Dean Winchester, are you asking me to go steady?"

Dean laughs. "Don't get any ideas," he says, pointing into Sam's face.

"Oh, of course not."

"But yeah, I guess I am."

Sam is surprised by the offer to say the least, but it certainly makes things a hell of a lot easier than his 'stalk Dean until you can no longer get away with it, then hightail to Bobby's and bang your head on walls until you find a solution' plan, so he nods. "Sure, okay," Sam replies. "I left my things at the motel, though."

"No big deal, we can swing by and then head out."

Sam resists the urge to get his hopes up. "Head out where?"

"Arizona, you said. Right?"

"Yeah," Sam replies.

"Arizona, then."

Sam breathes just a little easier for the first time in days.

Dean tries to strike up a conversation every now and then, but Sam can't really bring himself to laugh at old jokes like they're new to him.

"You don't talk as much as I thought you did," Dean says as they pull into a Biggerson's for dinner after their first full day of driving.

Sam smirks, wishes he'd recorded the moment for the sheer novelty of hearing Dean imply that he doesn't talk _enough_.

"You don't put out as much as I thought," Sam replies, because he likes staying within the confines of this pretend relationship they have. It hurts less.

Dean pushes him, laughs when it makes Sam walk into the door, but at least holds it open for him when Sam glares. "I think you need to loosen up," he's saying as they're helped by a waitress Dean doesn’t bother to pretend not to check out.

"I'm plenty loose," Sam grumbles. Dean laughs, and Sam realizes he's taking it out of context and kicks him under the table. "Not like that, you asshole."

"Hey, it's not my business, Sammy. Whatever makes you happy."

Sam freezes, and Dean must notice, because he laughs at Sam. "You'll get used to it," he says, pausing only to grin even wider. "Sammy."

And that's exactly what Sam is afraid of.

It's a long, long drive to Arizona. Thankfully, Dean's shitty taste in food and shittier taste in music haven't improved upon Sam's imagined absence, so Sam spends the trip mostly lying to himself.

"C'mon," Dean insists as he opens the motel door and flips on the lights. He turns back to Sam. "It's still early! Let's go do something."

"Like what? We're in Oklahoma, Dean."

"All right, so it's dead. But no where's so dead it doesn't have bars. There have to be at least two chicks—excuse me, one chick and one dude—willing to put out, even here."

"Go without me," Sam insists. "I'll see if I can find a hunt in our path for us to tackle tomorrow. Good?"

"We'll find the hunt later, man."

"I'm not even old enough to go to a bar with you, Dean. I promise I won't mind staying."

"Nah, please? I'll make you a new ID, it's not like we aren't both capable of making one that'll pass anywhere we take it."

Sam sighs, doesn't bother explaining to Dean that he never got good at making fakes—his brother always had too much fun with it, anyway.

"Sigh means yes," Dean says happily. "I'll get to work."

"Don't," says Sam, but it's a waste of breath, and he knows it. In two hours, he's being handed a plastic ID with his picture, identifying him as… "Freddie Mercury? Really?"

"Hah! Get it?" Dean grins. "I thought Elton John would be too obvious."

"You're the king of subtlety, Dean. And a moron."

Dean shrugs. "Get dressed, kid. We're getting laid tonight."

Sam doesn't change or smile with false enthusiasm, does as little as possible to contribute to a night he knows he'll spend at an empty table, watching Dean chat up girls and silently stewing. Still, Dean seems convinced he'll have a good time once they're out, and Sam can't face the idea of really letting him go, separating for a few hours and having Dean never come back, forget him as soon as he's out of sight.

In the end it's not actually that bad. They really are too far in the Bible Belt for the bar to be wilder than Sam can stand, and Dean sticks close for a few hours, talks to Sam and only to Sam. Sam drinks just enough to loosen up, have fun with him without slipping and saying anything that might make Dean's memory push back and rebel.

But inevitably, Dean sees something he likes, winks at Sam as he rises to follow it to the bar. The girl has honey brown hair with blonde highlights, a short denim skirt, but she's not completely trashy. Not Dean's usual type—then again, who knows what this Dean is into. He talks to her for about 20 minutes before throwing a look back in Sam's direction and leaning in to say something that makes her smile and nod.

They start walking towards the table, and Sam wonders why he can't actually just disappear out of the room. It's bad enough to sit and watch Dean flirt his way through the continental U.S. without Dean bringing the girl to sit at the same table as Sam and doing it where he can hear as well as see what they get up to.

Her eyes light up when she sees Sam sitting at the table, though, and Sam gets a kind of ugly idea.

"Hey, there," she says, taking the seat angled closer to Sam than Dean. "I'm Jenny."

Dean opens his mouth, and Sam knows he's about to say something about how she's not his type, so Sam beats him to the punch. He smiles openly and slips a hand around the back of her chair. "Hi, Jenny. I'm Sam."

Dean quirks an eyebrow, but when the girl leans closer, and Sam eyes what she's putting on display, he smiles like it's something to be proud of and heads back to the bar, giving Sam and Jenny privacy and probably looking for a new way to spend the night.

Sam is less comfortable than he seems at first, worried he'll actually have to go through with stealing Dean's intended hook-up. After a short while talking to Jenny, it becomes obvious that she's up for talking, having a good time, would maybe even be up for something if Sam tried, but she's a good Christian girl, and Sam is pretty sure the whole reason she was more interested in him than Dean was that it was obvious Sam wouldn't try to pressure her into doing something she'd regret in the morning.

She's funny, sweet, a lot smarter than Sam expects (which he feels sufficiently humble about), and it's a good night. Dean never does find anything he likes better, but he's still grinning when he waves his arms behind Jenny's head to get Sam's attention, gestures that he's heading back to the room, but Sam should stay and have fun.

Sam does, it's not until the bartender taps them on the shoulder and tells them to get on with it, but to get on with it somewhere else, that he realizes how late it's gotten. Sam walks Jenny out and makes sure she'll be safe driving home. Just as Sam's getting ready to leave, she bites her lip like she's nervous about what's supposed to happen.

"So, Sam, it was great talking," she says.

Sam nods. It's a sticky place. He knows she doesn’t want what she thinks he wants, knows he doesn't want it, either. But talking with a guy all night and then never hearing from him again is a serious hit to the ego, so Sam smiles and takes his phone out.

"Look, Jenny, I'm not from around here, so…" She shifts, clearly thinking this is the part where Sam tells her they should make the night count. "I'd love to call you sometime, if I'm ever passing through again. Grab some more drinks, maybe."

Jenny lets out a long breath, gives Sam her phone number, a hug, a kiss on the cheek, and a wave goodbye.

Sam makes it back to the motel at 2:45 and finds Dean sitting up on one of the beds, still fully dressed with the TV on. He clicks it off when Sam appears and grins wickedly.

"You dog," he says with a smile that reaches every one of his features. Sam can't even blink, he's never seen his brother look like that before. "You totally cock blocked me."

Sam shrugs. "Not my fault she had excellent taste."

"Didn't realize you had such good taste," Dean shoots back. "Been thinking I should have made that ID say David Bowie or something."

Sam pulls his shirt off to toss it into a corner, more interested in getting rid of the smell of cigarette smoke than anything. "Never said I didn't like girls just because I like guys."

"Never said much of anything."

"Did you really wait up just to give me trouble?" Sam asks, picking his duffel up off the floor to find a new shirt to sleep in.

"What?" Dean says with too much feeling. "No!"

"Caught red-handed," says Sam. "That's sad, Dean. You need a hobby."

"I had a nice little hobby all picked out and then it turned out being your hobby."

Sam snorts. "That's completely obscene."

"Was she? Well, in that case. Spare no details."

"If I have any romantic escapades at any point while we are doing this road trip thing," Sam replies, clearing his bed off after grabbing his toothbrush, "I am not sharing the details with you."

"You said 'escapades,'" says Dean.

Sam rolls his eyes and heads for the bathroom. The lights are out by the time he's done brushing and pissing for the night.

"Mornin', sunshine."

Sam swats at Dean's hand and burrows deeper into his pillow. "Five more, Dean."

Dean rolls him over on his back so that the sun assaults Sam and Sam has no hope of getting back to sleep.

"Today is the day, kid," Dean says cheerfully.

"What day?" Sam grumbles, pressing his palms into his eyelids.

"The day we make it to Arizona, of course."

Sam sits up. "Right. Yes. Arizona. Fantastic. I'll pack my things."

Dean tilts his head. "You sure have a weird attachment to this possible hunt in Arizona you won't tell me about."

"It's. I. Uh."

"I'm sure it is." Dean pats Sam on the back indulgently. "I was in Arizona not long ago, you know."

"Yeah?" If Dean remembers that, there might be some clues in what he has and has not retained, and Sam can't believe he didn't think of that before. "Did you go to Show Low?"

"Who fucking knows, man?" Dean asks. "All these towns blend together."

"What were you hunting?"

Dean shrugs his shoulders. "Beats me. The cases blend together, too."

"Wow, Dean, tell that story at a party some time."

"Suck it," he replies. "I was just making small talk."

"Really, the silence won't kill you, I promise."

"You can't get enough of hearing me talk," Dean informs him. "It's the highlight of your day."

"They _have_ been pretty crappy days," Sam replies, tapping a finger to his chin speculatively.

Dean laughs and pulls a pillow from under Sam's head, then smacks him with it. "You should show a little appreciation."

"Am I getting first shower or are you?"

"I'll race you," Dean answers. As if Sam is about to get out of bed, let alone run to the bathroom after him.

Show Low, Arizona is a dead end. Sam remembers the hunt once they get into town—he's pretty confident that the haunted wedding dress they'd had to salt-and-burn as the bride-to-be looked on in confused horror is not responsible for Dean's sudden bout of amnesia. They'd spent maybe three days total in town, and Sam is sure they didn't separate, same as every other town they passed through. Not long enough for Dean to screw up his memory, at least.

Sam's fake hunt obviously doesn't pan out either, but Dean doesn't get upset about the wild goose chase. They're about to head out of town when they pass by a bar called Rumors that Dean says looks familiar. Sam definitely does not recognize it.

He thinks back, wonders if there's any way Dean could have gone alone, and remembers a fight they had about something or other around the time they must have been in town. Dean had gone out pissed, left Sam pissed at the motel, and come back acting like the fight had never happened. Sam took that as the best apology that he could hope for out of Dean, they had make-up sex, and called it a night. Maybe something happened at the bar, something that had shaken Dean up enough to stop being mad at Sam but not enough to make him realize he was about to start losing him.

When Dean says they should stay in town for the night and have an outing, just so they didn't drive all the way for nothing, Sam doesn't put up a fight. Dean seems surprised, but Sam needs to get into the bar, see if there's any object or person that can describe Dean's behavior, or maybe Dean will see something that will help explain.

There's zilch. Sam makes sure they arrive early and leave late, looks closely at every person in the bar, keeps his EMF meter on as he tours the place, even pretending to get lost looking for the bathroom in order to search the kitchen at one point. Dean says he must have just been confusing Rumors for one of a million bars with similarly clichéd names, because nothing inside is ringing any bells. Dean tries to kick back and have a good time, but Sam can't manage to cloak his disappointment. He calls Bobby the next morning and reports that their best lead was a heaping pile of nothing.

Dean must see how sour Sam is over the failure to find a hunt in Show Low, even if he can't tell why, because he makes an effort not to give Sam a hard time for a few days. He lets Sam pick where they eat, and, while he doesn't relinquish control of the stereo, he does turn the music off when Sam would rather be under the car than inside it listening to a moment more of Metallica.

They stop to knock out a few hunts, mostly ghosts, and Sam doesn't realize Dean's steering them toward Caleb's until they're passing the border into Nebraska. Dean mentions that he's got a contact Sam should meet nearby, and why don't they stop in, see what information they can get from him? Sam has to sneak away to call said contact and beg Caleb to pretend he doesn't know Sam if they just so happen to show up, promising he'll explain when they get there.

Caleb does an admirable job faking it, and Dean's too oblivious to everything these days to suspect anything. He doesn't even find it weird when Caleb asks him to swing by a friend's place a few hours away to pick up some supplies he needs, as if Caleb doesn't have two perfectly functional feet and a car of his own. Dean asks Sam to come with and only looks a little put-out when Sam says he's going to stay and get to know Caleb, see what hunters they're both friends of and exchange stories Dean probably won't care about.

"All right, want to tell me what the hell you boys are running on me this time?" Caleb says with a wide, amused grin as soon as Dean's gone, as if this is all a great big joke.

Sam lays it all out for Caleb, giving him as much detail as possible, and waits to hear that it's just as much of a puzzle to him as it has been to Sam and Bobby. Caleb scratches his chin, stays quiet with his eyes trained on the floor for a long time.

"It's okay, man," Sam says, attempting to wave off the distressed look on Caleb's face. "I didn't really come here expecting you to hold all the answers. I was just sort of floating here with Dean and thought I might as well tell you on the off chance you knew something."

"Now wait just a moment there. Don't write me off just yet." He looks up, and Sam can see him debating whether or not to say something.

He steps forward, seizing Caleb's hands, completely forgetting himself. "Caleb, what is it? If you know anything, you have to tell me. Even if it's awful, even if Dean will never…" Sam pauses and forces himself on. "Even if there's no chance he'll remember me. I need to know whatever it is you know."

"I don't know much of anything, Sam," Caleb tells him apologetically. "All I can tell you is that I've seen something like this before, and I was just as stumped then as you are now."

"What do you mean?"

"It was probably six or seven years back. I was working my way up the east coast and I heard about an outbreak of amnesia in Savannah, Georgia. Not the normal kind, either, as if contagious amnesia wasn't weird enough. Pretty much exactly what you're explaining. I hadn't ever heard of supernatural amnesia outside of petty curses, so my interest was piqued, to say the least. I went to check it out."

"And?"

"And…I left three weeks later as unsure of whether it was our kind of job at all as I was the day I arrived."

"Tell me everything."

Caleb's case hit four people in Savannah the year he was looking into it and then apparently dropped off. He was first turned on to it when he saw an article about a popular author who had gone off his rocker, killed his wife, then killed himself. Caleb circled it as a possible demon job, but when he checked out the house, it became pretty clear there was nothing demonic or ghost-related about it.

The wife's sister was his best interview. She told Caleb that for a month and a half her sister had been telling her that her husband had suddenly lost all ability to write. Apparently he was one of those Stephen King-type whackos who depended on their art to keep them sane, and he started to scare the wife not long after the writer's block started up. With good reason, it turned out.

There were two more suicides within the same month, Caleb doesn't bother going into the details, just says they were pretty much the same boat. He tries to leave it at that, but Sam is listening too carefully, and there's an obvious gap in his math.

"And the fourth case, Caleb?" he asks.

Caleb walks around his desk and drops into the chair. "Look, Sam, I omitted it for a reason."

Sam's hand bunches into a fist. "And that reason was?"

"Fourth case is still alive. At least, she was when I left and I've heard nothing to make me think that's changed."

Sam lights up. "That's perfect! I can go check it out my—"

"Sam, you should leave well enough alone. That poor woman can't help you."

Sam feels fear digging under his skin. Whatever happened to that _poor woman_ is going to happen to Sam's _poor big brother_ if Sam can't fix it. "What happened, Caleb?"

Caleb shrugs. "Nothing but what's already happened to Dean," he says. "You don't need to see it."

"You're hiding something."

"You don't even know for sure this is the same kind of case, Sam."

"It's the best lead I've got. The first thing that even comes close to what's happening to Dean. I'm not letting it go unchecked."

"I don't want you getting your hopes up."

"You're hiding something," Sam repeats with an edge.

"I'm telling you that when you know how things will go if this is the same kind of thing, you'll wish you didn't."

"It's Dean." Which is all the explanation Sam can muster and all he really needs.

Caleb sighs, takes a pen out of the mug on his desk and begins scribbling names, addresses, and phone numbers onto the first blank sheet of paper he finds. "You want to talk to Daniel," he tells Sam, folding the paper and handing it off.

"I thought you said it was a she?"

Caleb laughs. "She isn't exactly going to remember too many details, is she, Einstein?"


	4. Part 3: An Impeccable Chronological Order

They leave Caleb's shortly after Dean gets back. Sam had been expecting to stay the night, maybe even a few nights, but he's not really comfortable there once they're done talking, and Sam doesn't care how slim their progress will be, he needs to start moving toward Savannah and whatever answers it may or may not supply.

Dean doesn't seem care what's driving Sam's thought process. He's on the move, happy to have someone to point his way and follow.

This drive is even longer than when Sam had been steering them to Show Low, and by now Dean is comfortable hunting with Sam, expects him to stop every few towns and see what jobs they can pick up. Sam finds them hunts only grudgingly, makes sure to take the easiest ones possible and has them back in the car with as few breaks for food, fun, sleep, or even hygiene as he can manage.

Dean teases him about being a drill instructor, but it's obvious he's comfortable. In his element. Sam is acting like Dad, and that's the only guidance this Dean has known. Except that Dad never makes stupid mistakes on hunts, never has to spend the night getting stitched up after what should have been an easy kill.

"We'll have to stay for another night," he says gravely. "I'll run to the front desk to let them know as soon as I'm done here."

Sam winces as Dean pulls a little too hard. "No, I can manage," he insists. "I wanna be two towns over before we stop for the night."

He tries to rise, and Dean forces him down. "Dude, are you crazy? That black dog nearly took your leg off. We're not going anywhere until you've slept on it and we're sure you're good to move around tomorrow."

"I'll be fine, it's not like this is new to me," Sam insists.

"You're not getting in my car bleeding."

Sam sits up on his elbows to glare at Dean, who's sewing carefully, his tongue poking just a little bit out of his mouth. "I won't bleed unless you do it wrong."

Dean glances up. "You never know," he says.

Sam sighs. Dean knows, Dean definitely knows. Nothing he stitches up is going to open, but Sam recognizes the worried look Dean is now much, much worse at hiding from him.

"Seriously, Dean," says Sam as gently as he can manage. "I've had way worse, okay? Don't worry."

Dean chuckles and looks away, all the subtlety of a train. "Who says I was worried?"

"You looked pretty worried."

"Worried where I'd dump your body if you kicked it, maybe."

"What a nice guy you are."

Dean grins. "And I am," he pauses to pick up the scissors and cut, "done!"

His fingers run lightly along the bottom stitches, double checking to make sure everything's in order, and then he trails off to the left, closer to Sam's thigh, and traces old scar tissue.

"This was a nasty one, huh?" he asks.

Sam laughs. "Probably my nastiest."

"How'd it happen?" he asks, eyes focused on the scar tissue and hands not leaving Sam's flesh. Which is pretty unfair in Sam's opinion, but he doesn't think Dean is turning him on out of malicious intent, so he won't draw attention to it.

"It was one of my first hunts. I think it was a goblin maybe? Whatever it was, it really liked kitchen knives." Sam smiles. "I think it would've castrated me if my brother hadn't noticed them coming and pushed me out of the way in time."

"Lucky," Dean says.

"No," Sam replies. "Not lucky. Protected."

Dean must see that it's upsetting Sam, so he reaches for Sam's wrist and invents a distraction. "How about this one?"

"Possessed cat—not making that up. It bit me and just would not let go."

Dean laughs. "Yeah, okay, I can see its little jaw line now."

Sam snorts. "Not my proudest moment."

"How'd you get away from the Big Bad Feline?"

"My brother, uh, set its tail on fire a little bit."

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Just a little bit?"

"The cat made it. Its tail didn't…"

Dean cracks up. He pulls back, and Sam catches his eyes roving. Sam pulls his shirt up, supplies the next scar for Dean to study. "This one happened last fall," he says. "We were trying to outrun this crazy swamp creature, ugliest sonofabitch I've ever seen. Fastest, too."

Dean leans forward, presses a hand right against Sam's chest and strokes his thumb over the skin. "It caught you?"

Sam nods. "That's where his claw was digging in. He caught me around the middle while I tried to run. But my brother shot its sorry ass before it could take a bite."

Dean swallows hard, and Sam nearly explodes when he starts touching lower, skimming the thin line of still-healing flesh that runs along and below the elastic of Sam's boxers. "How'd you get this one?"

"Poltergeist," Sam says, his breath coming just a little too fast. "Tried to drop a chandelier on me. My brother saved me."

"Any scars you have that don't end with 'my brother saved me'?"

Sam laughs and shows Dean the faded line of stitches on his elbow. "Ten years old, fell off the monkey bars. Should have listened to my brother."

Dean laughs and gives him a fond shove, pulling his hand away, and whatever tense atmosphere Sam was imagining is gone.

"How about you?" he asks, not because he wants to hear what Dean will say, but because he knows the way Dean values his scars and can't be selfish enough to keep him from sharing. "Tell me about one of your favorites."

Dean smirks, lifts his shirt and turns right. Sam looks at the long strip of red skin across his side, wrapping to his back, and licks his lips on instinct, remembering all the times he's traced the scar tissue with his tongue.

"How'd you get it?" Sam asks, actually a little curious to hear what Dean will say.

Dean's eyes are fixed on Sam's mouth. He shakes his head before replying. "I have no fucking clue anymore," he says. "I know it was a werewolf. I guess my dad must have ganked it before it could get me. I was scared out of my life at the time, but for some reason I like it now."

Sam grits his teeth, curls his fingers so tight he can feel his nails digging into his skin. He wants to fly at Dean, hit him, yell and remind him. That was the only time Sam ever saved Dean. The only time, how could Dean give that to Dad?

"You know what," Sam says, unable to stop himself from sounding angry, even though Dean has no idea what he did, "I think you're right. I'm tired. Gonna hit the hay."

"You…" Dean's eyebrows draw together. "Dude, it's 8:30. I thought we could order some Chinese, watch a movie or something."

"You can," says Sam. "I'm done."

Dean looks genuinely hurt for all of thirty seconds before he nods, turns off the lights, and leaves the room, probably to go fuck some girl in a bar, and Sam doesn't even care right now.

He still hasn't fallen asleep when Dean gets back a few hours later. He feels his bed dip when Dean sits on it, he feels Dean brush hair off his face, check his wound to make sure it's okay, and tries not to compare it to all the times Dean used to do the same thing when he got home drunk and thought Sam was sleeping. Back then, Dean would lean down and press a kiss against Sam's forehead, but now he sits quietly, sighs, and then goes to his own proper bed.

They get drunk on July 3rd. It's a strategic choice on Sam's part, because if he dies of alcohol poisoning tonight, he won't have to face Dean's favorite day of the year without Dean tomorrow. But Dean doesn't even mention the holiday until they're a good halfway through the handle of whiskey Sam bought, and by then Sam's filter is completely shot.

Dean begins grandly, grabbing for the bottle Sam is holding, "So tomorrow is the 4th of July."

Sam doesn't really want to give it to him, he has a lot of problems to drown at the moment, but Dean has a look like he's considering cutting Sam off, and Sam knows he has to at least pretend to be thinking clearly if he's going to have a bad enough hangover to sleep for 24 hours.

"Mmm," Sam answers, rolling his head to look at Dean. "And then comes the 5th, and then the 6th…wow, look at us, Dean. We're better than the Count."

Dean smiles. "He was my favorite."

"I know," says Sam.

Dean laughs. "I bet you know everything right now, huh kid?"

Sam makes a vague gesture that's supposed to say 'yeah, pretty much' but probably looks more like 'Sam Winchester has lost all control of his limbs.'

"We should do something. To celebrate."

"Why?" Sam tries to fix him with a piercing gaze and gets annoyed when he realizes Dean hasn't taken a drink since he stole the bottle back.

Dean shrugs. "I don't think I've ever celebrated one before." He kicks into the dirt, and Sam wonders if throwing up would be a good way to cut this short. He could totally manage it right now. "Don't think I've ever celebrated anything."

"You're such a fucking liar," he says. "Turkey sandwiches totally count as Thanksgiving. And if the Christmases don't count, well, the Barbies were your idea." And it's not like Sam doesn't know Dean can't remember any of that, it's not like he doesn't know he's supposed to be keeping his mouth shut about all this. But fuck Dean, because it's not fair.

"What the hell are you even saying, man?"

"Daddy not a big traditionalist, Dean?"

Dean frowns. "He had other things to do. More important."

And there's something new. Sam being the one who can give John credit for at least making a few years of normal before the hunt won out. Because of course Dean's forgotten the few holidays they got with John. Sam was there, so God forbid. Those memories just couldn't stay around. 

"I'm serious, Sam," he says, sitting up. "I haven't had a 4th of July since I was four."

"Four must have been a very good year for you," says Sam, laughing at how shiny the moon looks behind Dean's head. "Everything happened when you were four. Life really sucks after that, huh?"

"Did you guys celebrate? You and your dad and…I mean, your family?"

 _Why are you still trying to hold a conversation with me?_ Sam wants to ask, but what comes out instead is, "I did not consent to no more alcohol"

Dean laughs, leans over to put the whiskey on the ground, far out of Sam's reach. "I remember Mom and Dad barbequing and someone brought a golden retriever over, and right before the fireworks started, she put me in a little red, white, and blue outfit and made me take like 800 pictures. I just wanted to get away and roll in the dirt with the dog."

 _How can you remember that?_ Sam wants to ask, _and not remember me?_

"We can at least stop and watch some fireworks."

"I want to see those pictures," Sam says. "I want to find out if the dog eats you."

Dean quirks an eyebrow, and Sam sits up. He knows the pictures Dean is describing got burnt up in the fire, but he also knows Dean has a stack tucked away somewhere, pictures from after Mom died. And Sam really wants to know how he'd explain the infant in his arms on Dean's 5th birthday, the pumpkin-costumed toddler holding his hand for dear life as they head into their first haunted house on Halloween 1990, or the pudgy twelve year-old at some county fair, sticking to Dean's side like a shadow. Maybe Sam's vanished out of them, too. Maybe Sam was never in them at all. How could he have been if Dean doesn't remember?

"I've figured it out," he says.

Dean tilts his head and waits for Sam to continue.

"I think the dog eats me." Sam spends the next half hour laughing so hard he cries and crying until he laughs again.

Of course, Sam wakes up the next morning wishing he was dead on about 100 different levels. Dean laughs, tells him he kind of brought it upon himself. Which is so, so true and so incredibly not helping.

He spends most of the morning in bed, covering his eyes, dozing, rising only to throw up, and Dean does his best not to laugh at Sam loud enough to aggravate the headache.

Sam carefully avoids going through any of their usual 4th of July activities, and Dean doesn't know enough about celebrating to be disappointed. They make their own tradition, spend most of the day inside watching Independence Day (which Sam is a little surprised never made Dean's celebratory roster before) and eating a truly disgusting number of slices from the apple pie Dean brings home from a Publix run while Sam is trying to shower his hangover away.

The only thing Dean really insists on is fireworks, and Sam knows Dean thinks he's been lonely for a long time, can't bring himself to turn down the one thing he really wants to do with Sam. Anyway, Sam figures it'll only hit too close to home if Dean decides to try to light some up (which Dean does try, but he can't find anywhere to buy this last minute).

Instead, they pull sheets off Sam's bed (Sam laughs for a ridiculous amount of time when Dean wins rock, paper, scissors by dropping paper) and set up in the first park they find, sitting on their sheet amongst at least ten other families who are all doing the same thing. Dean smiles like a child as they wait for the show to begin. Once it does, they sit quietly, Dean watching the explosions, Sam watching his reactions through most of it.

Eventually he does turn his attention to the fireworks, even lets himself get drawn in and forget for a moment how wrong things are. He doesn't realize how close Dean has gotten until he feels his brother's breath on his neck.

"What would happen if I kissed you right now?" He asks. Sam turns to face him, and Dean tries to laugh it off. "Under the fireworks. How cliché would that be?"

Sam looks away. "Two years," he whispers to himself. And this was supposed to be the third.

"What was that, Sam?"

Sam looks back at Dean and half-smiles. "Painfully cliché."

"Can I, anyway?" Dean asks, fingers inching forward tentatively in the grass between them.

"What ever happened to your unwavering heterosexuality?" Sam asks, quirking an eyebrow.

"You did," Dean replies. He cups Sam's face and leans in. "I want you, I don't care what that makes me."

Sam reaches up, takes Dean's hand in his, lowers it but can't let go. He laughs, but it sounds off, even in his head. "You don't want to kiss me."

"I swear I do. I'm serious, man. I was freaking out about it, and I didn't want to say anything until I was sure, and, Sam, I'm so sure."

Sam licks his lips. He can't let himself kiss Dean. Dean is his brother, and now he doesn't know that, and even if he was okay with it in another world, this Dean might not be. "You have no idea what you're asking for."

"A kiss," Dean says easily. "Just a kiss. The rest of it can come when we're ready."

"No," Sam says, and it's the hardest thing he's ever done to have to push Dean away.

"You picked me up that first night for a reason, right? I've seen the way you look at me." Dean leans in again, licks and smiles against Sam's neck. "Same way I look at you."

Sam stands up without answering Dean. "I think I'm going to head back to the motel, man. Happy 4th."

Dean looks as lost and disappointed as he sounds. "Uh, yeah. Okay. You, too."

When they finally roll into Savannah, Sam is surprised to find what looks like an actual case in town. Someone has been leaving bodies all over, bodies missing limbs, and whoever it is leaves no DNA behind. It's not definitely a job, possibly just someone too good at killing, but it's enough to look into. It's a lucky break, it means Sam doesn't have to invent excuses to stay in town for the few days he needs to check into the leads he has, so he's not questioning it. He still has to invent reasons to get away from Dean for a few hours every day, but that's easier.

The first things Sam looks into are the cases Caleb already covered. It's mostly fact checking and mostly useless, the little Caleb told him holds up, the stuff he left out doesn't seem important. Sam puts his best lead off for four days, so terrified of what he'll find when he looks into what Caleb _did_ try to hide that he can't make himself face it. But a lot gets done in four days, and if they finish the hunt before Sam gets to look into this, he may never know.

Sam makes something up about a new witness he needs to interview, sends Dean off for a follow-up with a girl they really do need to talk to again, a girl who was pretty blatantly flirting with Dean the first time they talked to her. She's cute enough, and Dean hasn't been getting out as much as he's used to, so Sam expects him to be too thrilled by the assignment to really care where Sam is going. Instead he shrugs, asks Sam if he's sure he doesn't want back up, and heads off to do his job dragging his feet.

Sam stares at the paper with Daniel's phone number written in Caleb's messy scrawl for twenty minutes before he can actually force himself to dial the number. It's already been folded, unfolded, and refolded so many times that the writing is beginning to look faded and the paper is thinning. Sam's been putting a whole lot of faith into this scrap of paper.

It rings six times. Sam thinks it's going to go to voicemail.

"Hello." The voice on the other end of the line is male. Sam doesn't know if he's relieved or disappointed.

"Hi, is this Daniel?"

"Yeah, who's speaking?"

"Um, you don't know me, my name is Sam Winchest—"

"Look, Sam, I don't want to buy any, so please don't call again."

"I'm not—please don't hang up. I'm not trying to sell you anything." Sam takes a deep breath. "I'm calling because I have a problem. Caleb gave me your number."

There's silence on the other end for a long time. "I probably can't help you much," he says.

"Please, I need to talk to you. I'm in town. It'll just be an hour or so."

"Yeah," Daniel says quietly. "Yeah, of course."

He gives Sam an address that's close enough to the motel for Sam to walk and tells Sam he has enough time to do it now if he wants. Sam hears someone crying out in the background.

"I'm coming," he says, voice a little muffled. Sam thinks he's probably covering the receiver with his hand. "Look, I have to go," he says a few seconds later.

"No problem, thank you so much for this. But are you sure now's a good time?"

There's a dark laugh on the other end of the phone. "It's never a good time," he says, and then the line goes dead.

It's a nicer place than Sam expects, big white house with three stories, dark green shutters, and a huge lawn in front of the house. There's a note taped to the door. "Sam, please come around back."

Sam does just that, following a stone pathway to the back yard. There's an arch with roses around it, over grown with vines—it's all so beautiful that Sam has to wonder for a moment if he has the wrong place, even despite the note. How bad could anything be, really, in a place like this?

There's a man out back, Daniel, Sam assumes, talking to an elderly lady in a wheelchair, and what looks like a maid bringing them lemonade. Sam is surprised to see that Daniel is young—he sounded old on the phone, but he's probably around Dean's age.

When he spots Sam, he waves and begins to walk over. As soon as he gets close enough for Sam to really see him, he realizes that Daniel looks old, too: a worn expression, dark circles under his eyes, thin hair, and malnourished yellowish skin. He wants to say his first instinct was right, Daniel is at least 50, but no. Once he's up close, he's definitely young. He just looks sick.

"Sam?" he asks, holding out a hand.

Sam nods, shaking and smiling weakly. "Yeah, that's me."

"So, uh." He shifts his weight, glances back at the old lady in the chair. "Let's get this over with."

Sam follows him as he walks back across the lawn, plastering a big smile on his face before kneeling next to the woman in the chair. "Ms. Marie?"

She turns to face him and smiles wide. "Daniel," she says.

"Ma'am, this is my friend Sam. Can you say hello to him for me?"

She looks at Sam with an even bigger smile and holds out a hand with perfect Southern grace. "Any friend of Daniel's is welcome here," she says. "Did you want some lemonade, dear? I can call Linda back out."

"No, thank you," Sam says, managing to sound easy and comfortable instead of terrified out of his mind.

"Do let me know if you change your mind, sweetie." She turns back to the other man then, fond expression plastered all over her features. Daniel is trying to adjust the cushions on her chair, and she swats him away laughing. "I can do that myself, child," she says. "He spoils me senseless," she tells Sam. "He's made me a very lazy woman since he started taking care of me." She pats Daniel's cheek. "I don't know what I did to deserve it."

Daniel looks away.

"He's modest about it, too," she says, her lips crooking. "But I'll tell you, I didn't have anything until he came along. He's like a son to me."

Sam nods, not entirely sure why he's here, and Daniel stands up. "We're going to go talk inside really fast, okay? I'm gonna send Linda to make sure you're all right."

Marie nods. Sam follows quietly, waiting until the maid has closed the door behind her. He doesn't really know how to ask the question without being an asshole, but Daniel spares him the trouble.

"You want to know what the hell this has to do with you?" Daniel asks.

Sam closes his mouth and nods.

"That's my mother," he says, pointing out the window.

Sam's eyes widen. "And she—?"

"Yeah," Daniel says. "Doesn't remember anything. I was 15 when it happened."

Sam swallows hard. "She's sick, too?"

Daniel turns around to face Sam and leans back against the window pane. "My fault," he says.

"How?"

"I left. A year after it happened, I went to go live with my dad. Couldn't stand it anymore, you know? Or I thought I couldn't…I was just a kid."

He's not much more than a kid now, but Sam doesn't say so, makes a sympathetic face and lets Daniel keep talking.

"I got the call a few days later. Someone found her just in time, she hardly made it."

"Hardly made it?"

"Caleb told you about the others?"

Sam nods.

"There were almost four suicides that year," he says, looking away from Sam. "She tried to poison herself. Like I said, they found her in time, but she pretty much fried the part of her brain that controls her legs."

"You think it was because you—?"

"I know it was," he says.

"But if she didn't remember you why would she—?"

Daniel brings his arms up from the window pane to shrug. "I don't know how it works. I just know she can't function when I'm not around."

Sam stands up a little straighter, immediately thinking of Dean.

"Who is it?" Daniel asks.

Sam looks at him.

"You said you had a problem. Who is it?"

"My brother," says Sam.

"Ah," Daniel replies. "It happened recently?"

"About two months by my guess."

"He should be fine for a few weeks." Daniel kicks at the floor. "It gets worse with time. And, uh, I spent every day for six months trying to remind her. Caleb said that was the wrong thing to do."

Sam bites the inside of his cheek. "Still not thrilled by the idea of…"

"I understand," Daniel says. "I don't think I have any other help to offer anyway."

"Are you sick, too?" Sam asks. He knows it's bad form, but he can't help it.

Daniel pauses in the doorway and laughs. "It's, uh. It's a tiring life," he says.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispers.

Daniel shakes his head. "I'm used to it by now," he replies. He gives Sam a look that screams 'you're not,' but he doesn't say it. "How did you find Caleb?"

"Old friend," Sam answers.

"So you…do what he does?"

Sam nods.

Daniel hesitates a few seconds longer, then wraps his hand around the door handle. "I think it's too late for my mom. It might be too late for your brother," he says. Then he lifts his head and meets Sam's gaze head-on. "But if you find this thing, kill it. Whatever it takes. Kill it."

Sam doesn’t really need to be told. "Believe me, it's not getting anyone else. Not after my…"

Daniel opens the door then, walks quickly to his mother's side. Sam keeps going past them, but he hears her crying and sees her fling her arms around his shoulders when he bends down to meet her.

"You left me," she says. "Please don't leave."

"I was just talking to a friend," he says soothingly. "I'm not leaving."

"You can't leave, you can't. You know how much…"

Sam speeds up, doesn't think he can stand hearing it much longer.

"I think I know what we're up against here," Dean says in lieu of greeting. "I think it's a golem."

Sam doesn’t respond, finds it very hard to find anything to say to his brother.

"Taking the body parts to try and make itself real."

"Hmm," Sam replies, nodding as if he's listening.

"Explains all the clay, right? Anyway, that's the impression I got from talking to Hannah and the research I've done since I got home." Dean waits for Sam to reply and when he doesn't, he prompts, "Did you get anything out of your interview?"

Sam hardly looks at him. He got way too much out of his interview. "Nah, not really."

"Took you long enough for something without results," Dean replies with a little bit of an edge. Sam is caught off guard by the hostility, and Dean seems a little confused by it himself when Sam looks at him. "Sorry," he says. "I just meant…I don't know, I guess I just kind of missed having company. Missed you."

Sam blinks three times and doesn't even feel it coming before he's sobbing like he hasn't since he was twelve years old.

"Sammy?" Dean is at his side in a second, drawing him close and trying to comfort him. "Dude, why are you—? What's wrong?"

Sam shakes his head and grabs onto Dean's shirt. "Nothing," he says. "Nothing." And then, "Everything."

Dean pats his back awkwardly, and Sam pulls away. It's not like Dean's much comfort, so Sam might as well not make him feel uncomfortable.

"I want my brother," he says petulantly. "I just want my brother."

Dean tries to reach out to him, but Sam slaps his hand away.

"Not you. I don't even know who you are."

Dean frowns. "I'm gonna go get dinner," he says, as if Sam isn't being awful to him, and somehow that only makes things worse. "I'll be back whenever…just call me when you're hungry."

Sam wipes his face. "Thank you, Dean," he says gently. "I'm sorry I—"

"Just call me, okay?"

The door shuts softly.

Sam dreams of Stanford that night. Sam is happy and has a group of faceless friends, and no one—not even Sam—bats an eye when Sam gets a call. He dreams of the Impala totaled, totaled on purpose, and Dean lying dead inside it with a smile on his blood-splattered face. He dreams of Dean staring at him with a vacant expression, he dreams of himself, an old man at twenty, holding his brother with thin, jaundiced arms.

He wakes up screaming. He wakes up screaming, and Dean doesn't tell him to shut up, just pulls Sam's covers aside and slides in under them, wraps his arms around Sam's trembling shoulders, and tries to help Sam sleep.

The next morning, Dean is still wrapped around him, and it feels so right for a few seconds that it's only worse when Sam remembers it isn't. He sneaks out of the motel room, careful not to wake Dean, and fights to get himself under control before calling Bobby.

"Who the hell is this?" Bobby grumbles into the phone.

"Sam."

"It's six in the morning, boy. Some of us were out all night burning things."

Usually, this mood from Bobby would garner a laugh from Sam, even after the worst of fights with Dad. Right now it doesn't even register.

"Have you found anything?" he asks. "About Dean?"

Bobby sighs. When he replies, the attitude is gone. "Not yet, Sam. I'm sorry."

Sam shakes his head. "Not your job to fix all of our—" Sam's voice wavers. He chokes it down.

"But I will, all right? That's a promise, Sam. Before you go to school, we'll have this fixed."

Sam laughs. "School. I'm never going to school."

"Sam, c'mon, now. We'll figure this out. We still have plenty of time. It's a weird case, but we'll get it."

Sam can't even a little bit believe in things that good. Not anymore. But he doesn't want to be rude to Bobby, not after the way he's already treated Dean, so he stays quiet.

"You got anything new that can help?" Bobby asks.

Sam tells him all about Caleb, the old hunts, and the one that survived, if what Daniel and Marie do now can be called surviving. Bobby lets out a long breath when Sam is done talking.

"Balls," he says.

"That about covers it," Sam replies. "Bobby, we gotta fix him. I can't do this."

"I know, Sam. I'll look harder. Just give me a week or so."

"I think he's awake," Sam murmurs, spotting movement inside the room. "I have to go."

He hangs up just as the door opens, and Dean appears in pajama bottoms and a shirt so big Sam thinks it might be his. His hair is mussed and he smiles just a little when he sees Sam. Sam tries to forget all the things that smile has always done to him.

"Hey," Dean says, sitting on the Impala's hood next to Sam. "My girl taking care of you?"

Sam smiles weakly. "Isn't it supposed to be the other way around?"

Dean makes a face like Sam is talking nonsense and places a loving hand against the sleek black surface. "You talk about her like she's just some car," he says.

"Nah," Sam replies. "I know she's more than just a car."

"Good," says Dean, hopping off the hood. "In that case, you are worthy of her."

Sam laughs weakly, but at least it's a real laugh. "How's she supposed to take care of me, though?"

"Well, for example," Dean says, smiling when he meets Sam's eyes, "get in. She's taking us out to breakfast."

After she takes them to breakfast, the Impala drives them back to the motel, where Dean suddenly makes a very big deal of rushing to get packed up. Sam laughs, asks what the hell the rush is—they woke up early and it's not like they have another job lined up to get to. Not like Sam has the energy to look for a new one right now.

"We've got a job," Dean says. "A really important one."

That's all he'll say. He won't tell Sam where it is, or what it is, or just when the hell he found this golden hunt in between their falling asleep last night and waking up this morning. But Sam doesn't have a plan anymore, so he goes along.

They drive deeper into Georgia, which isn't a bad drive. It's really beautiful, and Sam is content with anything that puts space between him and all the new information he really wishes he hadn't discovered.

It's almost three hours before Dean turns onto a dirt road with a big, wooden sign of a cartoon turtle proclaiming "Welcome to Mock Springs!"

Dean pays the $3 entrance fee, grins as the man working the booth explains that there is no alcohol, outside food, or nudity allowed, and turns off the path as soon as he's out of the man's view.

"This is our job?" Sam asks, arching an eyebrow when he opens the door to the sound of laughing children and splashes.

"Uh," Dean replies. He smiles sheepishly. "I thought we'd go one day without a job. We could use a little fun."

Sam laughs at the 'we.' Dean has fun all the time. "And this was the best you could come up with?"

Dean grins. "You just got your stitches out! Come on, swimming is an important skill for a hunter to have, Sammy."

Sam smiles. Swimming's always been his favorite of the Dad-sanctioned free time activities, but this Dean doesn't know that. He just got lucky. That, or maybe Dean has every way to make Sam happy carved into his bones. Maybe Dean doesn't really know what to do with himself when Sam's away, but it's instinct to do what Sam wants without waiting to be asked. It makes Sam a little sad, knowing that his brother is that dependent on him, even when he doesn’t have a real reason to be. It's a big relief, too.

"And the screaming children?"

"It adds a little ambience, don't you think?"

"No, no I don't."

Dean gives Sam a conspiratorial look. "In that case, we'll just have to swim in the off-limit part of the lake, won't we?"

Dean opens the trunk and pulls out a six-pack of beer, then inclines his head in the wrong direction, assuming Sam will follow. Sam does, of course, but not without a little fuss.

"I bet there's a reason this part is off limits, Dean." Sam watches their feet for poison ivy. "Like alligators."

"You scared of some pussy alligator, Samantha?" Dean asks.

Sam crosses his arms over his chest. "That's not the point."

Dean laughs dismissively. "What was the point?"

Sam doesn't bother answering. They walk until they hit a clearing, and Dean must have been here before, one of the times Sam was in school and he was off hunting with Dad or training on his own, because it's a perfect spot. Not as much sunshine as the public area, maybe, but Sam's not a huge fan of sunburns, anyway. It's quiet, beautiful, and private.

Dean starts stripping his shirt off immediately, drops it uninterestedly and then begins to undo his jeans. Sam's mouth goes dry, and he realizes he left his swim trunks in the car. Dean keeps his boxers on—thank God Dean keeps his boxers on, because Sam is staring at him, like…well, like a guy who got used to touching and hasn't been allowed to in a month.

Dean stretches in his spot, arms over his head, body on display, and then turns around to look at Sam. "You just gonna stand there all day, or you gonna come play with me?" He grins, eyes dark, and Sam has to shake himself out of it, mentally running through every step in the process of getting out of his clothes.

Dean watches him with interest, and when Sam finishes and quirks an eyebrow at him, Dean takes a few steps, closing the distance between them. He reaches out and brushes his fingers over Sam's bruised shoulder, smiling softly. "Almost completely better now," he says.

"Yeah," Sam agrees weakly.

"How long's it been?" Dean asks.

"A little over a month."

Dean smiles up at Sam. "Feels longer than that, doesn't it?" he asks. "Kinda feels like a lifetime."

Sam barks a laugh. "Like you wouldn't believe."

"Oh, as if being stuck with you's been such a prize."

Sam kicks his shoes off. "We going swimming or what?"

Dean grins and turns, running and diving into the water like a damn ten-year-old. He comes up a moment later. "Fuck!" he yells. "Jesus fuck, it's freezing."

Sam, who is sweating in the hot summer day, decides that's as good a reason as he's going to get, so he follows his brother's lead, diving before he can feel the chill on his toes and change his mind.

"Your balls ready to crawl away yet?" Dean asks as soon as Sam's back above the surface. "Because I'm pretty sure mine absconded in protest."

"Absconded?" Sam replies. "I'm impressed."

"There's an SAT word for you, college kid," he says, then pauses. "I don't know why I know that."

Sam laughs at him. He knows why. Someone had to help Sam study, but it's weird to see the words sticking to Dean without any of the context.

"Don't be such a wimp," Sam replies. His teeth clatter just a little. "It'll be better in the sunlight."

Dean nods, and they both go under, knowing without saying so that they're racing past the edge of the trees' shade, where they'll be able to get used to the cool water.

"I won," Dean tells Sam. Which he definitely didn't.

"Won what?" Sam asks obliviously.

"The race you won't admit we were having because you know you lost it."

Sam laughs. "How old are you?"

"150. I know, I look incredible for my age."

Sam splashes him, hoping it'll shut him up, and Dean dives back under to avoid the spray. Seeing that he's apparently content to amuse himself swimming, Sam relaxes back, floating in the water and letting the sunlight lull him. He's actually feeling pretty good, and Dean leaves him alone for much longer than Sam has any right to expect. So when his head goes under and he feels Dean holding him, he's about ready to be gracious and amused by it instead of pissed.

"You look like a wet dog," Dean says cheerfully when Sam comes back up, shaking his hair out of his face.

"You regularly smell like a wet dog," Sam offers in return.

Dean smiles. "Actually, that was pretty good."

"I'm going for a swim," Sam tells him.

Dean splashes his hands on the surface. "We're up to our chins in freezing water, Sam, you're already going for a swim."

"I know that." Sam grabs at him under the water. "But unlike you, I haven't been swimming. So now I am going to do that. If you want to join me, you may."

"What an honor," Dean mutters before taking off. Sam follows, and they swim and fight for a few more hours before they realize they've pissed most of the day away and the sun is starting to work down the sky instead of across it.

"I'm hungry," Dean says as they're crawling up on the bank.

"Of course you are." Sam falls over onto his back, rests his head on his hands, and takes a deep breath. "I'm tired. Can we just sit for a while?"

"Yeah," Dean answers from somewhere too close to Sam. Sam opens one eye and sees him propped on one side, turned toward Sam.

"Dean," Sam says in warning, but Dean's already pressing his palm on Sam's chest, leaning closer. Sam tries to move out of Dean's space, but Dean catches him. "Sam," he says.

Dean's hand migrates, wraps around Sam's middle so he can pull himself closer to Sam. He's dripping all over Sam and licking his lips, and Sam knows he's supposed to push away, but the best he can do is turn his head so that Dean's kiss falls on his neck instead of his lips.

"Why don't you want to kiss me anymore?" Dean asks, voice heavy with frustration.

"I do," Sam admits. "I just…I can't do this with you."

Dean nods but doesn't pull away. "You seemed happy today, Sam. That's all I really wanted." He lets go but keeps his body pressed against Sam's. "I didn't mean to ruin it. I just thought I could make you happy. Thought I could maybe try making myself happy."

"You don't need me to be happy," Sam says, because that's the one thing about this Dean that was a positive. Sam hadn't ruined him when they first met.

"Yeah, I think I do," Dean answers with a small frown. He lets his head drop against Sam's chest. "Forget it. I won't again, okay?"

Sam wraps a hand around Dean, strokes it down his brother's back. "You did make me happy today, Dean," he says. It's at least a little true, and Dean deserves some kind of reward for his effort. "I won't forget it."

He feels the barest hints of a smile forming against his skin. "That's something, at least," says Dean, sitting up and grinning at Sam. "You hungry yet?"

"This is my favorite hunt ever," Dean announces. He waves his cotton candy in the air and smiles at Sam. "Official. Favorite."

"You're having too much fun, Dean," Sam says, looking around. "We're supposed to be paying attention."

Suddenly there's a blue cloud of sugar in Sam's face. "Want some?" says his brother's voice from behind the haze of a heart attack waiting to happen.

Sam pushes Dean's hand away. "No, Dean."

Dean pets the cotton candy. "It's okay, he didn't mean it," he assures the snack before popping another giant piece in his mouth.

"Dean," Sam snaps. "Focus."

"Creepy guy at the water balloon booth checks out jailbait, the little girl on the right's parents hate each other and are waiting until she's older to divorce, and the cute blonde who took our tickets knows something because she wouldn't look us in the eyes when we asked if she'd heard about the deaths." He pauses, ticking his fingers off, then nods and smiles smugly. "Am I paying close enough attention for you, Sammy?"

"Suck it," Sam replies.

Dean smiles wickedly, hallowing his cheeks and sucking harder at the sugar on his fingers.

"I think we should go check out the balcony."

"I think we should go check out the shooting booth."

Sam glares.

"What?" Dean asks, putting on an innocent tone. "It'll be like hustling the poor bastard out of his tacky stuffed animals!"

"We aren't hustling, we're working. And if we were hustling, we'd be doing it for cash, not paying to do it."

"Hustling is a form of working," Dean continues, just to ruffle Sam's feathers, and god dammit, Sam knows that, and it somehow still works.

He stomps off toward the cathedral, leaving Dean behind to laugh until he's bent over.

Sam doesn't realize Dean actually hasn't been following him until he gets to the cathedral door and looks around in every direction, expecting Dean to be standing in clear view, but there's nothing.

He sighs, and then something taps him on the shoulder. He jumps and turns to face…

"What is that, Dean?"

"It's a dragon," Dean explains, as if Sam couldn't tell. "A pretty pink dragon. Which of course makes it for you."

He shoves it into Sam's chest; Sam rolls his eyes. "Where did you get this, Dean?"

Dean smiles. "Well, you wouldn't let me pay to play the shooting booth. But I think we all know I was going to win it, so I took my prize anyway."

"You stole a stuffed dragon from a church fundraiser while we're supposed to be working a case?"

"Correction." Dean eyes the pink mass of fluff in Sam's hands. "Looks to me like _you_ stole a dragon from a church fundraiser while we're supposed to be working a job." He pauses, then gasps. "Jeez, Sam. That wasn't very professional of you."

Sam groans, looks down at the stupid toy. It smiles back at him, and Sam will never say it out loud, but it is kind of cute.

"Its name is Smaug," Dean says.

Sam looks up at him, raising an eyebrow. "Smaug?"

"Yeah! Like in _The Hobbit_. God, Sam, learn to read."

Sam can't help laughing at that one, and for some reason Dean takes that as unqualified approval of the entire situation. "That's settled now," he says seriously. "Back to work?"

Dean points toward the intimidating wooden doors, and Sam shakes his head. "Locked. I guess all the supervision is out here working the fair. No way we can pick the lock right now without someone seeing us."

"Shucks," says Dean, kicking the ground without feeling. "Guess we'll have to do this my way."

They break in through a window around back, which Sam feels a little bad about. Not that he's hugely religious or anything, but it still seems wrong. Until Dean points out that the church would probably prefer a broken window and no homicidal ghosts or whatever it is, and Sam thinks he's probably right.

According to reports, eight people have either jumped from or been pushed off the church's tallest balcony in the last month—eight perfectly happy people with no pattern except they all went to the same church. It's a hell of a climb before they reach the spot. Sam is frankly a little surprised eight people even went through the trouble of coming up here in the past month.

"Hold on, Dean," Sam says before Dean reaches for the door handle. He pushes Dean against the wall just to stop him from alerting whatever is up here to their presence.

"Mmm," Dean says hotly. "If you wanna slam me on walls, by all means, but are you sure now is the best time?"

"Shut up, Dean." Sam looks around at the little they can see in the dark. "We shouldn't go out there until we're less winded from the climb. Whatever this thing is, it's strong enough without us giving it advantages."

"Any excuse to grope me, huh?"

Sam lets go of him too quickly, knows Dean won't be fooled by it in the least. He digs in his jacket for his EMF scanner just to give his hands something to do. There's no response to it, but Sam's not ruling out a ghost all the same. It'll probably light up like a Christmas tree once they get onto the actual balcony.

"Ready yet, or should I start napping?"

Sam shakes his head. "Let's just go."

Dean rushes forward for the door and steps out before Sam can, looking around quickly. "All clear," he says. "You can come out now."

Sam smiles to himself, comfortable with Dean's protectiveness, and decides not to ruin the moment by pointing it out to Dean. He probably doesn't know that that's just what he does, must be confusing himself something awful.

"What does the great EMF detector god tell us, high priest Sam?"

Sam looks up with a sour expression. "I'm not rising to the challenge, Dean."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Oh, look who's so mature." His eyebrows draw in. "Hey, where'd you put your little pink toy again?"

"I left it inside, propped on a pew, so that it couldn't see how crappy you are at fighting and lose all respect."

"Aww, Sam. Protecting your snuggle buddy. That's cute."

Sam hits his meter in the side to vent his frustration, half at Dean and half at its complete lack of response. There's no way eight people just decided to jump off the same church tower. There has to be a better explanation that that.

He looks up and drops the EMF meter. "Dean, look out!"

Dean turns in time to duck a punch from a fist made of solid rock. "Holy shit!" he cries out. "Holy shit—is that a gargoyle?"

The gargoyle looks like it's trying to roar, but nothing comes out. Dean is chuckling at that when the statue grabs at him again.

He just barely dodges the hit, takes out his gun and shoots the thing three times in the chest. Pieces of rock crumble loose, and the bullets leave an imprint, but the monster doesn't seem to notice. Which, okay, fair enough. Rock lungs can't scream, that makes sense. Rock hearts don't stop beating because they never started, sure. But those things being true kind of should also add up to rock monster not trying to kill Sam's brother.

"What do I do, Sam?" Dean cries out, running around the creature so that it has to turn its back to Sam. Sam's pretty sure it hasn't even figured out he's there yet, Dean is keeping it plenty distracted.

"I don't know," Sam cries out. "Shit, I have no idea."

"Great, Sammy, real useful." Dean has climbed up to try to get out of the gargoyle's reach and it's got two arms stretched towards him. He kicks it in the face. "Write that in a card to my dad when I'm dead, okay?"

The gargoyle catches hold of the foot Dean's using to kick and pulls Dean down. Dean tries desperately to cling to the lantern he'd been using to hold himself over its head. It wraps arms around him and he struggles in its grip, but it's too solid for him to break away.

Sam begins to panic as the monster picks Dean up and carries him, stopping just before stepping off the side of the balcony. He holds Dean out, and Sam hurls one of the pieces that fell off the creature when Dean shot it so that the stone catches it square in the face.

Apparently, having pieces of its own body thrown back at it is enough to distract it from the kill, and it turns to face Sam, dropping Dean. Dean falls, and Sam thinks he's about to have to hurl himself off the building too, because Dean disappears off the edge.

"Dean, no!"

"Fucking moron," Sam hears Dean say through gasps. Sam looks closer and spots Dean's fingers gripping the stone platform.

There's no way to reach him to help draw him up, the monster is square between them.

"Dean," he says again, weaker this time.

"Stop being weepy and don't worry about me," he says. "I'll get back up on my own. Just don't get," Dean kicks a foot up and half his body reappears, "killed."

Sam picks up another chunk of rock and this time hits the gargoyle's eye. It rages at the assault, which buys Dean a few more seconds to crawl the rest of the way onto the balcony and stand. He runs as soon as he's found his feet and jumped onto the statue's back. It rounds, trying to catch him, but can't figure out that Dean is on it. The thing bucks wildly, though, and Dean begins to slip.

Sam watches in horror as it bites down on his ear with weathered teeth. A clawed fist wraps around Dean, is about to throw him off, and Sam does the one thing he can think of. He jumps at it, forcing it to throw Dean while it's still facing the church. Sam hears him make an impact against the wall, which is going to suck a lot for Dean, but it's better than plunging to his death.

The monster catches Sam's attack with only one foot still on the balcony, and Sam ducks, too quick for the stony movements to be able to trap him. He shoves as hard as he can, and the monster is too confused to freeze itself before it vanishes off the edge. Sam leans over, watches the gargoyle tumble down and break into a hundred tiny pieces on the ground below.

Behind him, Dean makes an injured sound, and Sam sees him trying to sit up against the wall.

"You okay?" Sam asks, kneeling beside him.

"It was a fucking gargoyle, Sam," Dean says hazily. "I'm _awesome_."


	5. Part 4: He Was Never Here

Sam presses an ice pack behind Dean's ear and holds it there until Dean lifts a hand up to replace his. They got lucky, the rock teeth had been too worn down to be sharp, they didn't break skin or take a chunk off, just left an ugly bruise. Dean brushes his fingers on Sam's for just a split second as he takes the icepack, and Sam pretends not to notice.

"Can't believe I actually got my ass kicked by a statue," Dean says. He laughs. "Man, that's ridiculous."

Sam considers getting up now that he's pretty much done dressing Dean's injuries, but Dean looks happy and exhausted and smells the way he always has after a hunt, and it's too damn intoxicating to walk away from, even if Sam really, really should.

"I feel like a lot of people would have come out with more than a bruised ear if they'd been fighting a giant, pissed-off rock monster. Don't take it too hard just because you almost peed yourself."

"Fuck you," Dean replies. "And fuck gargoyles, too. I never liked their stupid TV show, anyway."

Sam laughs. "I'm pretty sure the gargoyle that attacked you had no emotional attachment to the show, Dean."

"How sure?"

"Basically 100% sure."

"Okay," Dean says, sounding relieved. "Because that show was actually pretty epic."

Sam shakes his head. He'd never understood Dean's fascination with it, but he'd pretended as a kid to impress his big brother. Just for the stubborn sake of rebelling against that, Sam decides to be contrary. "That show was stupid," he says. "All it was good for was scaring children."

"Nuh uh, I learned a lot from it," Dean insists.

"Oh?" Sam says, lifting an eyebrow. "Care to impart some of the wisdom, then?"

Dean grins. "That show taught me that even blue chicks made out of stone could be weirdly hot." Sam shakes his head, and Dean sits up in bed. "Come on! That show had nerdy shit all over it. How did you not love that show?"

Sam shrugs. "All of the Shakespeare stuff was wrong."

Dean laughs deeply, then takes a deep breath. "No being funny right now," he says. "I'm trying to heal."

Sam frowns. "I'm sorry I wasn't faster, Dean."

Dean holds up a finger. "Wait for it." He leans over the bed delicately to avoid aggravating any of his other bruises and pulls something up from behind his duffel, holds a bright pink dragon out to Sam.

"You were half-concussed and you remembered to grab the dragon?" Sam asks.

Dean makes the dragon dance in front of Sam until Sam grudgingly takes it off his hands. "Tell your feelings to him, Sam. Look, he's smiling. He _wants_ to hear them. Let me suffer in peace."

Sam laughs, running a hand over the toy. It's so much like his brother, and nothing like his brother, and Sam can’t stand it anymore. Dean never would have done something that stupid, knew better than to risk his health on some joke, because his health is tied up in Sam having someone to look out for him, and in Dean's fucked up worldview, that's what made it important. But the joke itself, that's Dean through and through. And Sam thinks, maybe, he's falling in love with whoever this person is, even while he's missing who he's supposed to be.

He caves, tosses the dragon aside, and leans in to press his lips against Dean's. Dean hardly breathes, lets the ice pack drop so that he can place his hand on the back of Sam's neck, gently encouraging him.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Sam whispers against him. "I'm so sorry, I can't help it."

Dean cups Sam's face. "This is what I want, Sammy. This is all I want." He pulls Sam in for a quick kiss. "Please, don't be sorry for this."

Sam's still muttering apologies into his brother's mouth when he reaches down, starts undoing the top of Dean's pants, but he means it less every time he says it, every inch closer he gets to touching his brother. Dean's had this pair of jeans for years, and Sam's been taking them off him almost as long, so there's only a few seconds of effort before the fabric is giving way and Sam's hand is pushing into Dean's boxers, fingers wrapping around his cock.

Dean laughs. "You don't waste any time on foreplay, huh?" he says, moving just enough to ease Sam's access.

Sam beams, straddles Dean, still stroking, leans to the side and takes Dean's bruised ear into his mouth. He sucks gently, just enough to massage without aggravating it, licks the shell as he pulls away. Under him, Dean's already gasping.

"This is foreplay," Sam whispers.

Dean's breath catches. "What're you gonna do?"

"Anything you want me to," Sam answers, and he's not fucking kidding.

Dean puts a hand on Sam's chest to stop him, and Sam feels panic seize up inside him. What if Dean calls the whole thing off? What if Dean has suddenly remembered, if the whole trick to this fucked up mess was to make Sam take advantage of Dean and then let Dean come back just in time to hate him for it? Sam meets his brother's eyes almost shyly; Dean is looking up at him, a little scared, but without any sign that he's about to ask Sam to stop.

"I think…you can fuck me, Sammy," he says. Soft, vulnerable little offer. Just like the first time. God, it is the first time.

"You don't have to want that, Dean."

Dean nods. "I know. And I can't even believe I'm saying this, but it's what I want."

Sam crashes down on him, kiss breaking against his brother's lips, tongue slipping in deep, and Dean kisses Sam back like it would hurt not to.

Sam doesn't really know how they get naked. He's pretty sure the kiss never actually stops, though logically it must for them to end up without shirts on, without jeans or underwear or socks, and Sam's got a bottle of lube by his side, his finger pressed into his brother. He's too caught up to remember how he got here.

Dean's tense and Sam meets more resistance than he's used to. Even when they first started, Sam was pretty sure Dean had let a few guys fuck him in the months leading up to finally accepting that it was Sam he wanted. If that hadn't been the case, it wouldn't have mattered. Dean, Sam's brother Dean, always opened easily to Sam. Of course, that was all too tied up in wanting Sam for Dean to remember any of it now, and Sam hates how wrong it feels to have Dean's body not know how to take him.

"You have to relax," Sam says, not quite able to believe he has to say this. "You have to trust me."

Dean bites his lip and nods, placing a hand on Sam's bicep. "I'm just. Trying to get used to it."

"Close your eyes and let go." Sam smiles. "I promise I can get you used to it, but you have to let me in."

Dean does as he's told, and Sam slips in further, crooking his finger just so, waiting for Dean to groan, lift his hips off the bed the way he always does. Dean doesn't disappoint.

"Do that again," he begs. "Oh, God, Sam, do that forever."

Sam laughs. "Told you you'd get used to it," he teases, pulling his finger out. Dean makes a low, whining sound in the back of his throat until Sam pushes two in and hits Dean's prostate again.

"More," Dean gasps. "Fuck, that, only more of that."

"Shameless hussy," Sam jokes as he scissors his fingers. Dean tries to fuck onto them without really knowing what he's doing, like he's proud of Sam's taunt. Sam pulls away, uses a little more lube, and decides to play it safe, pushing in again, three fingers this time.

"What, are you teaching me how to count?" he mutters. "Want you to fuck me, Sammy."

Sam gets his fingers out and kisses Dean as he fights with a condom wrapper. Sam and Dean haven't had to use a condom in what feels like forever, and Sam had forgotten just how fucking bad he was at getting them open.

Dean chuckles against his mouth. "Here," he says, taking the packet from Sam. "Let me."

Of course Dean has it open, the condom in place, and is thrilling in stroking the lube onto Sam in under half a minute. Sam watches his brother's hand move on him, doing his best not to thrust or do anything else that could end this before he starts.

"Dean, not that I don't love the enthusiasm, but…"

Dean looks up, licks his lips, and nods, letting go of Sam's shaft. Sam moves a little, lines himself up, right over his brother, and leans in for one more quiet kiss. Dean catches him before their lips meet.

"Just…be careful," he says. He laughs. "Remember, this may or may not be a first for me."

Sam grins. "You can stop worrying, Dean. You fucked me that night."

Which says nothing for all the other times Sam has fucked Dean, but Dean's not interested in those times.

Dean moans, pulls Sam closer. "Fuck. Fuck. How could I have forgotten that?" He laughs breathlessly. "I'm jealous of _myself_."

Sam smiles. "We'll have plenty of time to make up for it."

They kiss and Sam finally lowers himself, slowly, pushing his dick into Dean with all the self-control he's capable of. He takes a few seconds to get his bearings, lets Dean relearn the feeling of being full of him, then sets his pace, fucking his brother exactly the way he knows Dean likes it.

Dean throws his head back after a few minutes, becomes an incoherent mess of Sam's name, blasphemy, and begging Sam to do all kinds of things Sam has every intention of doing. Dean grips his good shoulder too tight and fists his other hand in the sheets, careful even now not to hurt Sam's fading injury.

"Don't touch me, Sam," Dean warns him when Sam's changing his angle, thrusting harder and reaching out for Dean's dick. "I'm done as soon as you touch me."

Sam grinds into him, gasping and trying to keep himself from letting go. He wants to make it good for Dean, not have what he thinks is their first fuck be Sam shoving into him artlessly a few times before losing it. But it's not easy, not when he's been right next to Dean for more than a month and hasn't gotten anything but his own right hand. Not when Dean is beautiful and begging for him and almost, almost looking at Sam the way he's supposed to.

"I'm done, too," says Sam. "Soon."

Dean closes his eyes. "Want to do it with you."

Sam thrusts once, twice, and wraps his hand around Dean's shaft, stroking frantically.

He doesn't know which one of them the cry belongs to, just knows Dean's covered both of their stomachs in come by the time Sam is falling to the side, sure not to drop onto Dean where he's still sore from the hunt.

"That was," Dean begins, but he's not quite ready to talk yet.

Sam nods next to him. "Yeah," Sam agrees. "Yeah, it was."

They lie in silence for a long time. Eventually, Sam hears Dean moving next to him, then feels him watching. Sam turns his head toward Dean and blinks his eyes open. "Hey, there," he says. "How's it feel to be a sober member of the gay sex club?"

Dean reaches out to push a hair off Sam's face and smiles. "Nice," he says.

Sam doesn't say anything as Dean leans in to kiss him.

"I've never been happy before," Dean says when he pulls away, moving a hand lazily up and down Sam's forearm.

It's the first true thing he's said in over a month.

"And you're happy now?" Sam asks.

"I thought I was happy," he says. "I didn't even know what it was until…" Dean looks away, scrubs a hand over his face. "God, listen to me."

"I was listening," Sam insists. "I'm a very good listener."

"I sound ridiculous."

Sam nods. "I liked your ridiculous," he says, turning enough to kiss Dean. Dean follows his lead, climbs on top of him just to keep kissing.

"What about you?" Dean asks. "Are you happy, Sam?"

"For the moment," Sam replies, trying for evasion.

But Dean's too good, and he makes a face that says it's clear he understood what Sam wasn't saying. "One out of two," he says dejectedly, rolling onto his back. "It's a start."

They stay put for a few days, using Dean's bruises from the gargoyle hunt as a thinly veiled excuse so they won't have to admit out loud that all they're doing, really, is staying inside having sex for days on end.

Or, at least, Sam uses the excuse. Dean makes sure to remind Sam of what they're up to every chance he gets.

But eventually they have to keep moving, so they pack up and Sam finds another pretty standard case about an hour away from where they'd been camping out. The job is a haunted apartment, and Sam and Dean pick it before they realize it's in one of those snobby complexes for rich people that require a screening every time someone goes in or out. It means that, unless they find an ally inside (unlikely) or decide to knock the security guard out to sneak by them (more likely but probably not ideal), they have to get the job done in one shot. Their lie will only be convincing once.

"Full names," says the woman at the desk.

"Sam and Dean," Dean answers. 

Sam steps on his foot, just so Dean knows exactly how he feels about Dean using their real names, which only makes Dean grin like the cocky sonofabitch he is. If he were taking this seriously, he would be more careful, but then it _is_ a kind of petty job, and the chance their names will cause any trouble here isn't exactly high. Still. It's the principle of the thing.

"Here to check the locks on apartment 867," Sam says, attempting to do damage control.

"Full names," she repeats, blowing a big, blue bubble and popping it with an unimpressed look.

"I'm Dean Winchester," says Dean. Sam's glare intensifies, and Dean puts an arm around Sam's shoulder. "And Sam Winchester."

The woman writes it down, hands them two visitor's badges. "You must wear these at all times. You must leave the building after a period of three hours. Failure to adhere to the regulations can lead to…"

The woman drones on, listing all the legal ramifications of disobeying the rules, but Sam shoves Dean toward the door and waits for her to buzz them in.

"Why'd you do that, Dean?" he asks, whispering angrily.

"Come on, like anyone is going to know my name here."

"Not that," Sam snaps. "You know what."

Dean's expression softens. "You could totally be a Winchester," he says, like it means less than it does. "Just wanted you to know you have a family now."

Sam can't decide if he wants to cry or throttle Dean. He settles for huffing and stomping ahead down the hall to the elevators.

It's a crazy three hours, but they do end up finding the name they need to torch the ghost. They leave the building with a nod to the security guard that she doesn't catch and have dinner while they wait for the sun to set. It's a quick in and out job once they get to the graveyard, they're in bed early, tired but not injured. It's a rare way to end a hunt, and they're enjoying it, watching TV, Sam's head pillowed on Dean's chest and Dean running a hand idly up and down Sam's arm.

"What happened to your brother?" Dean asks out of nowhere.

Sam sits up and stares at him with an open mouth. He's not surprised by the question, he knows Dean's been wondering, just hasn't felt comfortable enough to ask until now. That doesn't make him any less miserable about answering it.

Dean looks away. "You don't have to tell me if it's—"

"I lost him," he says, though he’s looking right up at him. "That's more than I want to say about it."

"Oh." Dean is quiet and deadly still underneath him for a few long minutes. He fidgets and finally he whispers, "I'm sorry."

Sam doesn't respond. He doesn't know what he’s supposed to say. _It's okay_ , maybe, but it isn't. _Life goes on_ —it doesn't.

"I always wanted to be a big brother," Dean begins after he realizes Sam's really not going to talk about it. "Have someone to protect, you know? I think I'd be a good one."

"The best," Sam agrees, managing not to cry.

"Maybe I can look after you instead," he says warmly, jostling Sam's shoulder playfully.

Sam loses control then. A sob rips through him, and Dean sits up, face worried, unsure of what to do. He doesn't tell Sam to quit being a bitch or offer to get him a tampon, he doesn't do any of the things Dean would do. He whispers sweet, calming words, and it's wrong, it only makes Sam cry harder.

"Don't cry, Sammy," Dean pleads.

"Don't call me that," Sam manages as he wipes at his tears. "Please, not now."

"Sam, I didn't mean to—"

"Oh, I know," Sam replies, still unable to stop the tears running down his cheeks. His brother would never let him hear the end of this. "You never mean to. You just don't know better."

He gets out of bed, barricades himself in the bathroom until he's done getting over the fact that _Dean doesn't know better_.

They're lying together, fully dressed and awake. Sam can feel Dean half-hard behind him, but he doesn't move to do anything about it, seems content just holding Sam.

It's the weirdest feeling, cuddling with his brother. Not that he and Dean hadn't spent years tangled up in each other as they slept, it's not Dean's body that's unfamiliar. But Dean would have thrown himself in front of a bus before he would consent to spending hours they could be putting to some kind of practical use spooning.

Sam closes his eyes to doze, try to lose his thoughts, and he feels the back of Dean's fingers ghosting over his face. Whoever this is, he is too physically affectionate to be Sam's brother.

"You're so beautiful," Dean whispers. And, Jesus, he is way too open about his feelings.

Sam lets out an ugly laugh and turns in Dean's arms to face him. "You really don't hold anything back, huh?"

Dean smiles. "Finally have someone to talk to. Why would I hold back?"

Sam had never understood Dean's compulsive need for repression, but that's really not the point right now. "It's just what you're supposed to do," he replies, moving Dean's arm away and sitting up, his back to Dean.

Sam feels Dean's fingers moving up his spine. "That what your dad told you?" Dean asks.

Sam sighs, lets his head drop into his hands. "Forget it," he says.

There's quiet for a long time before Dean disturbs it, voice almost too soft to hear. "I see it, you know."

Sam tries not to let his guilt show in the tensing of his shoulders under Dean's touch. "See what?"

"You wishing I was someone else," he replies. "Disappointed."

"I'm not—"

"It's okay, Sam. You don't have to lie to me. It's not like I'm mad at you, I just wish you had the person you really wanted. You deserve to have him."

Sam never deserved Dean, probably doesn't even deserve this one.

"I wish I could get him back for you. Wherever he is, I would die to bring him back."

 _You would have to_ , Sam thinks. It's a disheartening thought. This is a good person he's lying in bed with. He's happier than Sam's brother ever could be, it would be a mercy to leave well-enough alone. And Sam would let him die in a heartbeat to bring his Dean back.

"I've got good news."

"I don't think I believe in good news," Sam replies. He sighs. "Sorry, Bobby, that was—really pathetic."

"Sure was," Bobby agrees cheerfully. "You want to hear my news or not?"

"I already know it," says Sam. "You've just saved Angelina Jolie from a werewolf, she's fallen madly in love with your manly display and insisted that you marry her and move to her mansion, never to hunt again. Oh, and she wants to adopt me and Dean, too. To express her gratitude."

"Guess it must have been in all the tabloids this morning, huh?"

Sam laughs softly. "You know nothing you do goes unnoticed."

Bobby makes an amused sound. "Unlike Angelina Jolie."

"She'll learn to love the spotlight for you, I think."

"I have real good news, too."

"You know how to fix Dean?" Sam asks. Bobby's quiet. Sam lets his shoulders droop. "Worth asking."

"I've got a start," Bobby says, trying to sound light. "I think I know what it is, and I'm working on how to stop it."

Sam sits up straighter. "Seriously?"

"Get your ass over here. I don't care what you have to tell that brother of yours."

Bobby hangs up. Dean enters the room with a cloud of steam shortly after, toweling his hair. Sam lets himself stare a few seconds too long before shaking his head and remembering Dean's eyes are not on his dick, so Sam should stop staring at it.

Dean looks like the devil incarnate when Sam meets his gaze. "Why Sam," he says, "I never knew you cared."

Sam chuckles.

"What's up?" he asks.

"I just got a call from an old friend," Sam answers, wishing Dean would put on pants before he has to bring Bobby up. He pauses and doesn't start talking again until Dean's got his boxers on and the towel is in a pile by the bathroom door.

"Didn't realize you had any friends," says Dean as he digs around for a clean shirt. "You know laundry time is fast approaching when you can't recycle any of your dirty clothes because they've all been used to clean up jizz."

"Questioning my life choices right now," Sam replies.

Dean shoots him a quick grin, waggling his eyebrows. "Don't worry, Sam. I've still got a few good shirts left for us to destroy."

"Gross," Sam replies. "My phone call," he says, trying to set the conversation back on track.

"Right. What did your imaginary friend say?"

"Said we both know the same guy."

Dean finally looks intrigued. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." Sam does his best to look clueless. "You know Bobby Singer?"

"No way!" Dean replies. "You've known Bobby this whole time and we didn't figure it out?"

Sam shrugs. "Guess so."

"Bobby's family," Dean says. "My dad away from Dad, you could say."

"Mine, too," Sam agrees. "I was thinking we could visit him. He sounded like he had his hands full with this case he's working."

Dean frowns. "Bobby works fast, man. By the time we get there, he'll be done—full hands be damned."

"Probably." Sam smiles. "Let's use it as an excuse and go anyway."

"I don't see why not." Dean grins.

It's a solid two day drive to Bobby's with stops for food and sleeping and generally goofing off. Sam wants to take turns driving, eat nothing but peanut butter, and make it there in a day, but he's not supposed to have any particular reason to want to see Bobby, just a social visit. He can't tip Dean off, and Dean is getting way too comfortable with their life, he's happy to do everything and anything with Sam. Which would be a lot less obnoxious if Sam's skin wasn't crawling.

Bobby knows what it is. Might know how to fix this. And Sam is pulling over every few hours to buy cheeseburgers with a guy who looks like his brother.

"You okay, buddy? You look constipated."

Sam shakes himself out of his thoughts and looks up at Dean. "Huh?"

Dean snickers. "Nothing, duchess, just let me know if we need to stop at a pharmacy."

"Fuck off, dude, I'm not constipated."

"Well, then, what crawled up your ass and died? Something's going on with your ass, from the way your little face is scrunching up."

"And you're an expert on what goes on in my ass, huh?"

The waitress, who just so happens to choose to appear by their table as Sam says this, gasps and scowls at Sam.

Dean smiles like the sun. "Sure am," he says proudly, turning to the woman. "Can we get some coffee, doll?"

She scratches it down on her pad and huffs, stomping off.

Dean kicks Sam lightly to get his attention back. "Seriously, Sam. You all right?"

"We're just making a lot of stops, is all. Doesn't seem necessary. We're wasting time."

"You have somewhere to be? I really don't think Bobby Singer is losing much sleep over our absence, sorry to say."

Sam shrugs. "I just don't feel comfortable goofing off so much."

Dean looks out the window, a small smile appearing on his face. "You deserve to get used to it. I don't care what your dad told you."

Sam shakes his head but doesn't say anything. John never had a problem with letting them have Dean's kind of fun, and Sam is never going to get used to Dean assigning all of Sam's problems to some awful father figure he doesn't even realize he worships.

Fortunately, Sam has another perfectly acceptable worry to bring up, and he uses it to distract Dean from his eagerness to get to South Dakota. 

"Dean, when we get to Bobby's can we, uh, not tell him that we're…"

Dean immediately makes a relieved face. "Yeah, good, let's not."

"It's not that I think Bobby would have a problem with it," says Sam, though of course, Bobby would. Anyone who knows them would, and they would be right to, not that this has ever mattered to Sam or his brother. "Just, hunters talk, you know? And they're not the most accepting people in the world."

"Your dad," Dean guesses. "It's okay, Sam. I don't want it getting back to mine, either."

"Okay, good." Sam changes the subject. "Think we can make it there by sunrise?"

"If we drive all night," Dean replies. "There's a motel right up the block that we passed, though. Didn't look too expensive, and it's getting kind of late."

Sam sighs. "Tomorrow, then," he says. "We'll get to Bobby's early tomorrow."

Dean smiles. "Unless we stop for lunch."

Dean's knocks on Bobby's door are loud and shameless, almost elated, and ring out with enough energy to express all of Sam's anticipation. Once that door is open, Sam tells himself, everything is going to be okay.

"You knock hard enough to chip my door, I'll shoot you," Bobby yells from inside the house. He opens the door and makes the annoyed face Bobby has perfected. "Oh, great, it's you two morons."

Dean spreads his arms out and takes Bobby in for a hug. "How long's it been, Bobby?"

"Not long enough," Bobby grumbles, but he claps Dean on the back.

Dean pulls away and gestures to Sam. "Look, you were wrong about me. I made a friend all on my own. I hear you two know each other?"

Bobby nods, steps forward and claps Sam on the back. "How you doin', Sam?"

Sam forces a smile. "Fine," he says. "I'm totally fine."

Bobby makes a completely unconvinced noise, and Dean frowns slightly, putting an arm around Sam's shoulder and dragging him into the house. "Sam is just upset because they didn't have the right shade of lipstick for him when we stopped to pick up snacks earlier. He'll get over it." Dean squeezes Sam's shoulder encouragingly when Bobby turns his back to them.

"We need time to talk," Bobby says the first chance they get, after an hour or so of catching up when Dean goes to the bathroom. "It was right not to tell him, we could have blown the whole thing."

"How long will it take?" Sam asks.

"Few hours at the least," says Bobby. "You got any ideas?"

Sam nods slowly. "Yeah, I've got one. We'll need to stay a few days."

"Fine by me," Bobby replies. "But I've got a job out of town in a few days, been tracking this damn thing for months."

"You don't mind us house sitting?"

Bobby shakes his head. "Just get us a few hours tomorrow to talk. Whatever it takes."

Dean comes back in, wiping his wet hands on jeans. "Whatever what takes?"

"Whatever it takes to make you mind your own business, boy." Bobby stands and begins to head for the kitchen. "I'm making steaks tonight."

Sam isn't proud of what he has to do to get Dean to actually agree to leave his side for the time it will take Bobby to explain everything he's found out. In fact, if Sam ever does get his brother back, this is the one thing Sam is most worried he'll be pissed about. Still, Dean recognizing what Sam has done would necessitate Dean remembering he taught Sam how to do it, and that would be more than enough to make up for how angry Dean would be.

They go to bed, kiss for a while before Sam retreats to his mattress, and he waits until he's damn sure Dean is asleep to slip out. Dean taught him how to tamper with cars, an important skill if he's ever on the run from cops. It can get him a head start, and this one time, it can buy him a week of Dean outside from morning to nightfall, slaving away on his baby, wondering what happened to her.

Sam really hates having to hurt the Impala, but it's her or Dean, and it's not like there's any chance Dean won't know how to repair the problem, especially when the car "breaks down" in an auto repair yard.

The car won't start when they get in and try to leave the next morning, which takes Sam completely by surprise, he swears, and Bobby actually does look taken aback by Sam's method when Dean knocks on his door and explains the problem.

It works. There is nothing else that matters as far as Sam is concerned.

Bobby stands by the window, moving a curtain aside just enough to see out. Dean must be busy at work, because he nods and covers up the space, turning back to Sam.

"What is it, Bobby?" Sam asks, before Bobby even gets a chance to open his mouth. He gives Sam a pointed look, and Sam ducks his head, embarrassed to be so pushy. Bobby will tell him, he knows that, but he's been waiting months and just the few seconds of hesitation are making Sam feel like his hair is turning gray on the spot.

Bobby takes the seat behind his desk and Sam scoots a chair up, leaning onto the table to see the book Bobby spreads out. "What I _think_ has your brother is this."

He points to a drawing of a pale woman with dark black hair, red eyes, and sharp teeth. It looks like a really ugly ghost, but the label at the top of the page says succubus. Sam quirks an eyebrow. "A succubus?"

"That's right," says Bobby.

"But Dean is fine, it's just his memory that's failing. Don't those things eat men's life force or something?"

"Well, debatably. Popular lore says that, but older documents seem to point in another direction. It says that they're descended from the same thing as sirens—though I haven't found a name for the original creature, they all seem to have died or been killed off. But according to my more dependable sources, some of them went toward Greece and evolved into sirens, the other branch ended up in Ireland and became succubi."

"And they feed on memories?"

"Not entirely." Bobby scans the page quickly, as if for confirmation, then looks up at Sam. "It's somewhere between that and the popular interpretation. They don't take life force so much as a person's will to live, whatever drives the person they're preying on. So if it's a talent, they lose their ability. If it's a person or a thing, they lose all recollection of that person or—"

"So Dean…" Sam looks away. It's not like it's entirely a surprise, but Sam can't help being that much more upset about the loss of his brother. He was Dean's _reason for living_ and because of that, Sam lost him. He almost wishes his brother had loved him just a little bit less, been a normal brother, so Sam could have some part of him. But then, if Dean hadn't been Dean, hadn't loved Sam as much as he did, this wouldn't hurt so much anyway.

"'fraid so," says Bobby, as quietly as he can. "Now the trouble is that Dean can't remember you, but he'll feel your absence as if you were still his brother. The suicides happen when a person can't stay close or find the thing the monster takes from them. They lose their will to live, they off themselves, makes sense, right?"

"But Dean's got me. He'll be okay."

Bobby scratches his neck. "He'll be fine. You won't be."

"What do you mean?"

"There are a few cases recorded in here, you should read them over. All cases where the person doesn't commit suicide, but it's not pretty."

"What do you mean, Bobby?"

Bobby points to the book and pats Sam on the back, leaving the room to make sandwiches, apparently. What the cases all say is that the succubus's victim will need the missing part of their lives with them at all times to stay stable. And whatever that thing is, sustaining two people at once drains them of energy much faster than it should. All of the cases die together, but all of them die less than twenty years after the whole mess starts. Sam thinks of Daniel, of how weak he'd looked and how scared Marie got when he left for five minutes. "It's a tiring life," he'd said, but that wasn't it.

Sam jolts up when the plate Bobby sets down in front of him makes a clattering sound. He blinks up at Bobby, and he looks as sorry for Sam as Sam feels for himself. "A parasite," Sam says. "This thing turned my brother into a parasite."

Bobby frowns, but he nods. Sam laughs bitterly. Eighteen years of leaching off Dean, and he's finally getting what's been coming to him. But Dean—Dean feeding off of him—he would hate it. He would rather be dead. It's not how things are supposed to go.

It's not how things are going to go.

"How do I get the memories back?" Sam asks. "There's gotta be a way, right?"

Bobby hesitates. "I know how to kill it. And I know how you might get your brother's memory back. You're not going to like either of the solutions, though."

"I don't like any of this," Sam reminds him tersely. "Tell me."

"To kill it, you gotta make it human. That's not too hard, just means giving it a taste of some blood from its victim. You've got Dean and he bleeds plenty on hunts."

"Right," says Sam, not letting himself relax. "And the catch?"

"All the lore says that two things have to happen in order for a victim to remember. First of all, the succubus can't just be made human, because it'll retain all those memories as if they're its own. You'd have to kill a person, Sam."

Sam's hand tightens into a fist behind the desk. He's not in love with it, but he'll do it. Any "person" who would take his brother from him doesn't deserve to live, anyway.

"And then there's some uncertainty. Some of the lore says the memories won't ever come back, leaving the victim is just as good as leaving them for dead. The rest of it says you have to leave, the victim has to remember what's missing on its own, and if you're around Dean after the creature dies, he won't remember a thing until you go away."

"For how long?"

"I'm not working an exact science, Sam. I wish I could give you something more substantial. It could take a few hours apart, it could take forever, and, like I said, it might not even work, might backfire and have him try to off himself. All the reports are inconsistent."

Sam closes his eyes and focuses on not hyperventilating. Dean might never remember, he tells himself, trying to get used to it. Dean might never be okay. Dean is not his brother anymore.

Who is Sam if not Dean Winchester's brother? He never existed. He's been hallucinating himself for his entire life. Sam wants to know why he's still here, why he couldn't just die. That would have been better, easier than being alive and not at the same time. Someone could be mourning him right now, and it's sick, but Sam feels like that's all he wants. Dean should be mourning him; instead, he's trying to teach Sam how to smile.

"What's going through that giant skull of yours, Sam?" Bobby asks, looking down at him with a critical eye.

"I'm thinking there was a fire 18 years ago," Sam answers, rubbing his temple. "And I was supposed to get off easy."

Sam doesn't look up for Bobby's reaction, so he never sees it. All he sees is the bottle of whiskey Bobby puts down in front of him, the two glasses Bobby pours. They sit quietly. Sam decides to run through his plan, all the things he has to do if he wants to even entertain the notion of seeing his brother again.

Find the damn thing somehow. Feed it Dean's blood. Kill a human. Abandon his brother when Dean could need him most. He takes one very long sip from the glass and finds it empty when he sets it back down.

"How did he get into this mess?" Sam asks after almost an hour of silence.

Bobby shrugs. "Just being Dean, I gather. The succubus seduces men by appearing as their ideal mate, then it gets hazy. Either it only has to be a kiss or they have to, you know."

Sam shakes his head, looking through his glass at the magnified patterns on his shirt. "Dean wouldn't."

Bobby laughs. It's a genuinely amused laugh, but it falls dull somewhere in the middle of the room, sounds hollow and ugly by the time it reaches Sam. "You ever met your brother?"

Sam puts his glass on the desktop. It's loud, maybe he cracked it. He doesn't care. Bobby doesn't know why, can’t know why. But Dean wouldn't have kissed or fucked some girl, even if she was perfect. Even if she was beautiful in all the ways Sam will never be. Dean wouldn't have cheated on Sam.

But he did, he must have, because Dean comes in shortly after, smiles at Sam, and there's no trace of brother in it.

Sam spends most of the night quiet, and he's expecting Dean to notice, which Dean does. But Sam really can't train himself into pretending to be happier than he is, so he just does his best to stay out of Dean's way as he gets increasingly agitated. Sam falls asleep on the couch while Dean and Bobby watch TV and has nightmares, wakes up to find Dean helping Bobby clean things up for the night. They work in silence, but after the living room is done, Dean presses a palm to Sam's cheek, a goodnight, and follows Bobby into the kitchen. Sam counts fifteen seconds after they leave and then sneaks to the door to spy on them.

Bobby is standing by the refrigerator putting something away on the top shelf, and Dean advances on him.

"You know his family?" Dean asks, edging closer, cornering Bobby.

"Yeah, I know 'em," he admits.

"His brother," says Dean. "What happened?"

"I thought I told you to mind your own business," Bobby replies, dismissing Dean by pretending to look through the mess of envelopes on his counter.

Dean won't let it rest. "But he did die, right?"

"Worse," Bobby replies. He looks up at Dean. "Worse for Sam, at least."

"You have to tell me what happened, Bobby. I don't care how bad it is. I keep trying to help him, and I feel like I always say the wrong thing."

"You don't want to know about it, so quit asking." Bobby lets out a long breath. "Look, I know it must be killing you, but I don't think there's any way you can help him."

"I have to, Bobby. You don't understand." Dean laughs. "Hell, I don't even understand it. But…I can't stand it when that kid's upset. You gotta tell me what to do."

Bobby shakes his head and rises from his seat. "Best you can do is try and help him move on."

"Poor Sammy," Dean says under his breath.

"He let you call him that to his face?" Bobby asks, unable to hide his reaction when he hears Dean say it.

Dean shrugs. "I don't anymore."

Bobby shakes his head as he passes by Dean and walks out of the room. "You two could make one hell of a social experiment."


	6. Part 5: Looking Toward Your Coastline

Bobby leaves the next morning to go on his hunt, and Dean is still a few days away from having the Impala ready to go. It leaves Sam inside with only his thoughts, and they're not exactly good company. He spends most of his day cleaning things that aren't dirty, trying to distract himself, trying to decide what his next move is. The only thing he can think of now is going back to Arizona where this all started, hoping the damn monster is there, because if not, it could be anywhere. He's a lot less smug about successfully making the car break down now that he needs it to keep the hunt moving.

So he gets antsy, and sometimes that means horny, and Dean walking in and out covered in car grease and sweat is a pretty filthy invitation, especially now that they have the whole place to themselves. Sam goes outside to him, seeking out a little entertainment. Dean is spreading parts out on the Impala's roof, so Sam comes up behind him and presses his brother into the hot metal.

"I never told you," Sam whispers into Dean's ear, "how hot this gets me."

Dean pauses whatever he's doing and lowers the piece of the engine in his hand. "Oh yeah?"

Sam turns Dean around to face him, licks his lips. Dean was always out of reach like this; either he'd be working at a garage, or Dad would be around, or Sam was just too young and his brother was still an unobtainable object and smelling him after a hard day of work just gave Sam more to imagine while he jerked off.

Sam could never tell his brother this turned him on, even now. He's spent his whole life competing with that damn car for attention, and, as much as he loves it, it's just the way things are. Sam pretends not to get it, pretends to be annoyed when Dean spends his days slaving over it and comes home too late and too tired to bat an eye at Sam.

But this isn't his brother and Sam can cherish the familiar dirt smudges on Dean's face, can do exactly what he wants to do. So he kneels in the sand, tugs on the front of his brother's jeans with enough enthusiasm to have Dean shifting even as he protests. "Sam, we're outside, dude, and I smell like—"

"Mmm." Sam tugs the pants down just enough to free Dean's dick and rubs his face into his brother's crotch, taking a deep breath. "You smell like I need to suck you. Right now."

Sam looks up at Dean for permission, and Dean is staring down at him with his mouth just a little open, panting already from heat and labor and Sam's fingers wrapping around him, working his dick until it's hard in Sam's grasp. He swallows hard and nods, and Sam takes his brother deep into his mouth and lets Dean fuck when he wants to, sucks hard but draws away whenever Dean gets close.

He makes the blowjob last as long as he can before Dean's fingers pull roughly on his hair and Sam swallows everything Dean gives him. He comes back up, wipes his lips. Dean's fingers work clumsily to tuck himself away and then he tries to reach for Sam's dick, but Sam shakes his head.

"Later," he says. "Inside."

Dean nods, kisses Sam, trails down his neck. "Wanna suck you, too, Sam," he whispers. "Let me try that?"

Sam smiles and nods. "Later."

Later happens at around 6 o'clock when Dean finishes working for the day. Sam is making dinner, and Dean announces that they'll probably be ready to head out by noon tomorrow, which is pretty good news from where Sam's standing. Dean makes good on his promise pretty much as soon as he walks in the door.

"I'm making dinner," Sam protests when Dean presses against him and begins to try unbuttoning his shirt from behind.

"The cans of pasta will wait, Chef Boyardee," Dean murmurs. "And you should wear less plaid."

Sam laughs, turning to face Dean and leaning back on the kitchen counter. "Gay for a month and already you're giving me fashion advice?"

Dean smirks. "Takes too fucking long to get off," he says. "Plus, who wears flannel in the middle of the summer?"

Sam finishes the job for Dean, unbuttoning the shirt and pulling off the one underneath, too. "All the better to take it off," he says.

Dean kisses him, and looks a little nervous when he pulls away. Immediately he sinks to his knees.

"Dean, you don't have to," says Sam.

"Want to." Dean hasn't tried this yet, but the visual of Dean with his wet mouth open is too good for Sam to resist. And God, he is about to let his brother suck him off in Bobby Singer's kitchen, and there's just no amount of ethical reasoning that can make him pass this up.

Dean takes Sam self-consciously, does a good job for a first time, but it's definitely a first time. Sam almost can't even enjoy it. Dean is on his knees, trying desperately to worship Sam and having no idea how to do it. The real first time Dean gave Sam a blowjob, Sam would have sworn Dean was sucking everything from his dick to his brain right out of him. It was perfect.

Sam thinks of the other men, the ones who came before Sam, who taught his brother how to make Sam feel good, and can't help thinking of the other woman, the one who took Dean from him. 

He gets angry then, illogically upset with this poor, innocent guy who just wants to make Sam happy, who shouldn't have to pay for some other Dean's mistakes. He pulls his brother off him, meets his eyes, and wants to own him, wants to see that Dean belongs to him, only him. Dean looks confused, and Sam doesn't care, doesn't bother explaining. He jerks himself a few times before letting go, coming on his brother's face, marking what's supposed to be his without Sam having to assert himself.

Dean just groans and lets Sam lick the mess off of him.

He feels sorry for getting pushy later, though. He can't say as much, Dean just seems to be happy Sam got off at all, but Sam apologizes that night with a long, slow fuck, exactly the way Dean likes it, before going down on his brother.

"God," Dean breathes, voice still unsteady. "You're really fucking good at that."

Sam smiles into his thigh and works his way up his brother's skin, pausing to suck and kiss and bite in all the places he knows Dean will feel it most. Above him, Dean makes a wrecked sound and shifts up into Sam's mouth.

"How do you know," Dean asks, "exactly what to do to me?"

"Don't get too comfortable," Sam murmurs over Dean's rib. "Not ready to do it again just yet."

"I feel like I won't be ready for another week."

Sam laughs and crawls towards Dean's neck. "I promise that's not true." He reaches down, brushing fingers over Dean's balls, and he feels them drawing in. "See," he says smugly. "Almost there for me already."

"You're insatiable," Dean says fondly, flipping Sam onto his back, pressing him into the mattress, kissing him deep and slow and taking his time. "Where the hell did you learn it, man?"

Sam palms Dean's face and kisses him, nuzzles into Dean's neck so he doesn't have to look at him. "I had a good teacher."

"Just one?" Dean asks, pulling away to look at Sam.

Sam nods. "Just the one."

"Taught you all of that?"

"We had a lot of time to study," he says playfully. He grins and tries to change the subject, "I can teach you, though. I like studying."

Dean doesn't meet Sam for the kiss he leans up anticipating, and Sam opens his eyes to see an expression on Dean's face that doesn't fit his brother at all. He looks threatened.

"What's wrong, Dean?" he asks.

Dean smiles thinly. "Did you love him? The guy who taught you?"

Sam bites his lip. "More than anything."

"Ah." Dean sits up. "What happened? Did your dad make you move or did he…?"

"It doesn't matter, Dean." Sam puts a hand on the back of Dean's neck, plays with the sweat caught in the short hairs.

"It's just…I know how stupid and irrational it is, but the thought of someone else getting you drives me crazy. I hate that he beat me to you, that he got to touch you, and he was the one to learn you first." Dean ducks down, trailing his lips on Sam's neck. "I'm jealous and I know I have no right to be,"— _no reason to be_ , Sam silently corrects—"but every time I think of it, my blood boils."

"He's not the one here right now, is he?" Dean shakes his head, opens his mouth and tries to speak, but Sam stops him. "I'm with you now."

"Are you still in love with him?" Dean asks. "Am I ever gonna measure up?"

It's a good thing Sam can actually get away with lying to this Dean. "You're ten times the man he was." Sam takes a deep breath and tries to get used to the truth. "He slept around."

"On you?" Dean asks.

"Apparently."

"Is that why you guys broke up?"

Sam shakes his head. "I didn't know," he says. "Even if I had, I wouldn't have given him up."

Dean frowns. "Doesn't seem like you, letting some guy treat you like that."

"He wasn't just some guy."

Dean shakes his head, puts a hand on Sam's face, and strokes his thumb over Sam's cheek. "He must have been crazy."

"Well, he was, but probably not for that," Sam answers, surprising himself with a smile.

Dean laughs a little and kisses Sam. "I think he was crazy."

"I think you're crazy," Sam replies, rubbing his nose against Dean's.

Dean smiles beautifully. "I just might be," he answers.

For one unbearably ugly moment, Sam thinks this could be enough. He could have an easy life with this Dean, and his brother can go to hell. After all, he brought this upon himself. He would still be here with Sam if he could keep it in his pants.

Sam hates himself more than he's ever hated anything, more than he hated Dean looking at him without knowing him, as soon as the thought forms. His brother—who spent their childhood hungry so Sam never learned what it felt like, who threw himself into 100 suicidal situations to come between Sam and the line of fire, who read Sam the same ten stories so many times when Sam couldn't sleep that Dean could still recite them word-for-word up until a couple of months ago—was allowed one little slip-up on some night when they were fighting and the temptation was too much. Dean could have cheated on Sam a thousand times, and Sam would still be lying here, clinging to this stranger, desperately missing his brother.

Dean kisses him. "I'm learning, Sam. I'm gonna get good at this."

Sam lets out a heavy breath and fakes a perfect smile. It's not like Dean is bad at anything they're doing, he just doesn't know every little way to make Sam tick. It's pretty entitled to expect that, but Sam's three years—or a lifetime—of spoiled rotten. "You don't exactly suck, dumbass. I don’t know what about the last few weeks and the fact that we've hardly gotten out of bed to order pizza makes you think I'm not enjoying myself."

"Mmm." Dean's face glosses over, effectively distracted from the subject at hand. "Pizza."

"We just ate a few hours ago," Sam reminds.

"Yeah, but then you fucked all of the calories out of me." Dean grins. "Can we?"

Sam pushes him off and beats Dean to the phone, hears Dean cursing him from the other side of the bed as he orders his favorite toppings and makes sure to leave Dean's off.

After they leave Bobby's, Sam starts driving south. Dean never actually says he can drive, but Sam snatches the keys on their way out the door, and Dean doesn't put up a fight. He doesn't even ask Sam where they're going until they stop for dinner six hours later, which gives Sam plenty of time to find an excuse for why they are, once again, going to Arizona. Sam doesn't actually come up with anything, but when he says he thinks he missed something and there really was a case in Show Low after all, Dean just shrugs and continues with his dinner.

They make the trip in decent time. Sam doesn't speed as much as Dean does, but he shakes his brother off when Dean wants to make five stops in one day out of sheer boredom, so it's only two and a half days to do what took two and a half weeks when they were stopping for hunts and tourist traps along the way. Dean only complains a little that they're blowing past possible jobs—he's gotten to the point where his willingness to do what Sam wants is almost more creepy than it is convenient, and Sam tries not to think about what that means as he pushes harder on the gas.

They arrive in Show Low around dusk. The woman at the motel counter recognizes them by now—it's their third visit in as many months. She smiles knowingly and reaches for a room key before they've even opened their mouths.

They're settled early enough, and Dean is still so antsy from the ride that when Sam asks if he wants to go back to that Rumors bar for a few drinks, Dean grabs him by the shirt sleeve and they're on their way in minutes.

It's maybe the first time ever Sam is as excited to get to a bar as Dean is, so he hurries ahead of his brother and doesn't listen to the voice in the back of his head that tells him he probably won't find anything this time either. It's not like he knows what he's looking for. It's not like the succubus is going to stay in one town or come back here while Sam is looking to kill it. Sam can't listen to that voice, because this is the only lead he's got.

They have a few beers over quiet conversation, Dean leaning close to tease Sam or pretending to look at girls as they pass and then laughing at whatever faces Sam makes. After a while, Dean puts his hand on Sam's and whispers that he's going to the bathroom, which Sam knows means he should wait a few minutes before following. Sam smiles up at him and nods, because why the fuck not? He hasn't seen anyone giving off supernatural vibes or looking at them funny, and if the night is going to be a waste and Sam is going to have to start this hunt again from scratch, he might as well get a fuck in the bathroom of some sleazy bar for his pain.

He stares into his beer for exactly two minutes, thinking over the fact that he has less than a month left before school and no leads on Dean's case, then rises to meet up with his brother.

Before he starts walking, however, he sees Dean through the bar crowd, walking away from the bathroom, heading for the door. Sam makes a detour to follow him and reaches for his hand just before Dean can leave. Dean turns to face him for only a second and Sam blinks a few times. When Dean smiles, he looks like he knows exactly who Sam is.

"Dean?" Sam asks, his heart in his throat.

Dean just pulls Sam slowly after him. "Outside," he says. Sam follows blindly.

They stop in the parking lot, and Dean reaches up for Sam, still smiling. Still looking like his brother. _It can't be this easy_ , Sam thinks as he ducks down for a kiss. It can't, nothing can. But Sam can't question it.

"Sammy," says Dean, like he means it.

Sam makes a pathetic, strangled sound and cups his brother's face. "Dean, Dean," he whispers. "I missed you so—"

Dean presses his fingers to Sam's mouth, stops him from kissing. "Don't, Sammy," he says. "I don't want to do that to you."

Sam freezes, pulls away, but Dean doesn't let go. Sam sees it now. Dean is looking at him right, but it's not Dean looking at him. Something is off, slippery. Sam doesn't know if he's imagining it, if he's finally cracked, or if the man standing in front of him really has changed. There's nothing different about him, but Sam could swear Dean's features were never this serpentine.

"You're not him," he says, trying to push the creature away. "You're not him."

"I am," it says. "But you're right, I'm not."

Sam shakes his head. Nothing is making sense, and the monster still hasn't let go of him. Sam can't force its hand away. The grip is like a claw made of steel, even as it's still in the form of his brother's hand. The whole thing is making him sick.

"Give him back," Sam begs. He doesn't know why he's expecting that to work, but he tries. "Give him back or kill me, but please just get it over with."

The thing brings a hand up and caresses Sam's cheek, and it looks at Sam with a wide-open expression that belongs nowhere near his brother. "I don't want to hurt you."

Sam scoffs and tries to break away from the touch. "Too late."

It frowns. "I never meant for that to happen, Sammy."

"Call me that again and I'll kill you."

The monster quirks its mouth. "Isn't that what you came here for, anyway?"

Yes, Sam remembers, it was. Sam's got a vial of Dean's blood in his back pocket, and if the thing knows why he's here, his only hope is that he can be quicker than it. He reaches for it as fast as Dad taught him to draw a weapon, but the succubus catches his hand and wrenches the vial away from Sam before he can reach its mouth. Then it pockets the blood and soothes a thumb over Sam's wrist where it had to twist to make him let go.

"I don't want to hurt you," it whispers. "I just want to talk."

"Give me my brother back, and then I'll talk."

"I am your brother." It's smiling again when Sam looks up. "Can't you see that?"

Sam shakes his head. "You're not him, you're nothing like him."

"I'm closer than that shell you've been pretending is him for months." It runs one of Dean's hands through Sam's hair. "I remember you, Sam. I remember everything we ever—"

"We never did anything." Sam pushes it again, needing to get away. "I hate you, you took him. You're not him."

The thing lets go of Sam and puts its hands up, a signal of good faith. "I could be him. We could be so happy. I love you, the way he used to. I'm the only one who can love you like that now." It grins. "I'm your brother now. He's a stranger that's trying to take you from me."

Sam tilts his head. It's the weirdest fucking thing he's ever heard, and frankly he could really go for it trying to kill him like every other monster Sam's met right now. "Who are you?"

"Dean. I can be Dean."

"I don't want you to pretend to be him, you're not him. Who are you really?"

The monster blinks slowly, then looks very sad. "I don't know," it says. "I'm no one. I'm everyone. You want your brother, so I'm your brother."

"Please don't," says Sam. "Don't pretend to be him. Looking at you is—" Sam swallows. "You're scaring me. Please, be anything else. Just be yourself."

"I look like this because you want this. I can't control it."

Sam pauses, and it hits him for a moment that if she can look like Dean now—

"You were me," he says. "That's how you got him to give you his memories. You used me against him."

It nods, frowning.

"He never cheated on me. He never did anything wrong. And you used me—"

"I didn't mean to," it defends, trying to reach out to Sam. "I swear I couldn't help it. He wanted what he wanted, and I was so hungry."

Sam closes his eyes against its pleading look—Dean's pleading look, the one Sam's almost never seen—and focuses. "I want you to show yourself," he says, and means it, thinking maybe he understands how this works. Sure enough it changes. It's not like any of the skin crawlers or shifters Sam's ever seen. There's no morphing, no shedding. As soon as he wants it to change, it does. Sam doesn't know if he blinks or if the succubus does, but one moment it's Dean and the next moment it's someone else.

The woman in front of Sam is beautiful, maybe too beautiful, with that same snakelike edge that he'd observed when he'd looked at her as Dean. There's long, bright orange hair curling down her back, lime green eyes that almost slant enough to look unnatural, but not quite. She's plump—she's getting fat on Dean's love for him, Sam realizes, and he wants to jump forward and claw at her for it. Her jaw is the only thing about her that isn't beautiful. It's too big, and when she opens her blood red lips, her teeth are triangles with sharp ends, a child's drawing of something from a nightmare. Her tongue slips out, flicks up and down, forked like a snake's. She covers her mouth, and looks away, ashamed, and Sam feels sorry for all of a second.

"I don't have to be this," she says, her voice more hissing than human now. "I can be beautiful. I can be Dean forever and you'll never have to miss him."

Sam shakes his head. "You can't be."

"But I love you," she says, like she really doesn't get where Sam's coming from.

Sam shrugs. He's unarmed, she's already overpowered him. Sam's not going to abandon his brother for some copy, even if it can remember him, and it's obvious she's not going to hurt him. There is absolutely no where for this to go. His best hope is talking to the monster, and that's no hope at all, really.

"You don't even know me," Sam points out. "Whatever love you think you have for me? You took that from me."

"No, it was an accident."

"And the people in Georgia? Were those your accidents, too?"

"Yes. I am the only of my kind to ever come to this continent." She looks down. "I only left to try and get away from it, to try and start over without others telling me it was okay to feed."

"You could have saved the airfare," Sam snaps.

"I stopped after Savannah," she says, as if that makes anything okay. "I stopped for years."

"Funny how I don't believe you."

"I tried." She shrugs, her shoulders slumping. "I tried so hard. You wouldn't have resisted Dean if you knew what he tasted like."

"You ruined my life."

She watches him with wide eyes, makes no response. Sam turns to go back to the bar, find Dean and accept that he's never going to be able to get his brother back, never going to school, they're going to die one day, not far off. Dean is going to drain him. And if all that is true, Sam just wants to get to dying quickly.

A hand touches Sam's shoulder and he turns reluctantly to face the succubus. She smiles sadly and takes the vial of Dean's blood she'd stolen from Sam back out, uncapping it. "I tried to make us both happy," she says. "But if you won't have me, I'll get you your brother back."

And she drinks the blood, every drop. Sam watches as her veins begin to show through her skin, dark lines across her face, her arms. She doubles over on a cry, and Sam rushes to her side on instinct.

She convulses for a few minutes and then goes still, and Sam turns her over to check if she's dead. She's asleep, but Sam knows it worked because her jaw is smaller and Sam pulls her lip up and sees a regular set of teeth. He breathes a sigh of relief and tries to shake her awake.

Her eyes open slowly. "Where am I?" She asks. "Who am I?" Sam thinks she's a clean slate, maybe, he can take her to a hospital and go back to Dean, and Dean will remember him because she doesn't. And all of this can be forgotten. But then she looks at Sam and smiles, her eyes much kinder now than they were when she was still a monster. "Sam," she says, as if relieved.

"No." Sam shakes his head to resist shaking her. She's still in pain. She might not even know what she did. He wants to break her. "No, no, no. You don't remember."

Her eyebrows crease and she reaches for Sam, and she suddenly looks very old despite how gorgeous she is. It's in her eyes, they're sad. Sam feels sorry for hating her. But he does. "You saved me," she says. "You saved me from being…I wanted to forgot," she says. "I wanted it to work for you, Sam. You saved me."

He looks around the empty parking lot for help, as if a solution is just going to jump out and present itself. The woman reaches out and brushes Sam's side where's he's got a gun tucked away and pulls it out. "You should do it. I've got no reason to be here. You deserve your brother."

Sam accepts the trigger end of the weapon when she holds it up to him through a daze. He doesn't move to help her as she places the bullet end over her heart. He doesn't move to stop her, either.

"Go ahead," she says, closing her eyes.

Sam's hand tightens on the gun. He tells himself nothing's changed, reminds himself of what she did to him and that mantra he's been repeating all week, ever since Bobby explained the terms. He knew this might happen. He hates her, he has to hate her. _Anything that takes my brother isn't human_ , he tells himself for the thousandth time. He's squeezed so many triggers. This is just one more.

But she _is_ human, and she's not fighting, and there's something wet in the corner of her eyes. Dean's little brother wouldn't kill a person, Dean would never look at Sam the same way if he knew, he would never forgive murder if he were still here.

God, but Sam wants it. He wants her dead and this whole thing over with, and yet the gun slips out of his hand and falls to the floor. Sam can't do it. Sam can't save his brother. Dean would do anything, any awful thing to rescue Sam. Sam can't fire off one little bullet. 

He lets her go, filters out her crying his name after him, doesn't turn to see if she's following. Dean is sitting at their table inside; he jumps up when he sees Sam.

"I thought you'd left when you didn't meet me," he says. "I was worried for a min—Sam, what's wrong?"

Sam shakes his head, takes Dean's hand. Looks at him closely, trying to find that one thing that will convince him this is okay. This can be good enough. Because this is the best Sam can hope for, he'll never be strong enough to get Dean back.

"I want to leave," Sam says. "Take me home, please."

Dean wraps an arm around Sam's shoulder and presses a warm, lingering kiss into Sam's neck. "It's okay, Sammy. We'll go home."

There's no sign of the succubus in the parking lot as they exit. Sam sees his gun sitting on the parking lot pavement, but he stays in Dean's embrace and lets the man who used to be his brother lead him to the car.

Something drops on Sam's face, and the stale scent of newspaper begins to choke Sam as he rouses.

"Find me a hunt, bitch," says Dean.

Sam can hear him walking away from the bed and pushes the newspaper down to watch him. "And what are you so busy doing?" Sam asks crossly.

"Making you breakfast," Dean replies. Sam sulks, because it's a good enough answer that he has to sit up and make an effort to be awake. "Anyway, you're the one that wanted to come here—yet again. So find me the damn hunt."

Sam flips the paper open to local news and begins scanning. There are three articles on attempted break-ins, none seeming related, and something about a school board meeting. Sam doesn't see any murders, not even violent crimes.

"Well, the weather today is hotter than Hell," he says, pretending to be engrossed in an article.

"In the middle of July? In Arizona? You're kidding me. I just bought a new coat for this."

Sam rolls his eyes and keeps looking over the news. "And apparently this place is so boring David Spade and missing cows make the front page."

Dean makes an amused huff. "Can we _leave_ yet?"

Sam sighs and is about to agree to it when an article finally catches his eye. He stares at the picture in the bottom left corner of the paper, at the woman in the picture. At the dead, limp way her head is sitting on her shoulders. "Mysterious Woman Found Dead in Local Motel," the title announces.

Sam reads the article through three times. Apparent suicide, and police have no leads on the woman's identity. Below there's a photograph, the caption instructing Sam to call authorities if he can identify her. Sam can't take his eyes off the picture. It's her, it's definitely her. And according to the article, it happened just after Sam left. His stomach turns, disgusted with himself, because his instinct is happy. Then he's sorry, and then he's looking at his brother, wondering how long he'll have to go without seeing Dean again before Dean will remember. Sam wants to run out and start the process immediately.

"You okay, man?" Dean asks, laughing a little as he turns from the eggs he's cracking to look at Sam. "You look like you just saw…that expression doesn't really work with us, huh?"

Sam swallows and shakes his head, forcing calm. She killed herself because of Sam. She hung herself from some dirty motel's ceiling fan, she'd never even tried living. Because of Sam. _For Sam._ And the worst part about the picture is the smile on her lips, like she's not even sorry.

"What do you say we get out of here and never come back again?" Sam finally manages.

Dean scrapes scrambled eggs onto two plates and grins. "Breakfast first, then we skip town."

Sam takes a few days to figure out what to do now that the hunt is done. He's not celebrating, but he is relieved, and for better or for worse, he's got a lot of planning to do. Dean won't remember him until he leaves, and Sam wants that, of course he wants that. But he's not in love with the idea of leaving Dean sooner than he needs to, especially when he has no way of knowing when he'll be able to see him again.

Dean won't get worse, at least, if Sam stays with him. There's only a few more weeks left in the summer, anyway, and then Sam has somewhere to go. So he decides to spend the end of the summer the way he's spent most of the summer: hunting with Dean and missing his big brother.

The hunts they take aren't memorable—a few vengeful spirits, a dryad in a forest outside of Portland, and a clan of witches in Montana. With two weeks until he has to leave for school, Sam finally accepts that they have to go see John, and he's going to have to explain himself, and things are going to be even worse between him and his dad than he'd been preparing for.

He calls John first. Because one thing Sam has learned is that you don't surprise John Winchester, no matter what. Sam has enough bad news to drop on his father's head; the least he can do is give the guy a little fair warning that they're coming.

John is all business when Sam calls, asks his usual run through of questions, makes sure everyone is okay, then gets dismissive. It's not until Sam asks where he is so they can come see him that he seems to catch on that something's wrong. Sam has to do a whole lot of dodging and a pretty fair amount of lying to get his father to agree to let things drop and just tell Sam where he is.

Sam cleverly slaps the "you have to pretend you don't know me around Dean" clause on at the last minute, when it's too late for John to freak out, and hangs up. John doesn't call back; Sam figures he'll try to figure things out and call back when he's had some time to relax. For all his faults, John has been trying with Sam lately. Maybe he knows, deep down, that he could lose his son if he's not careful. Maybe it's too little, too late, and he should have thought of that years ago.

John is in Carson City, Nevada, closing out a hunt with Caleb. Sam figures that's in his favor—Caleb will talk John down, convince him to obey Sam's instructions to play strangers when they arrive and will help take Dean out of the equation when Sam needs to talk to John alone. Caleb's probably the reason Sam's phone isn't already exploding with phone calls from John demanding answers.

"Where to next?" Dean asks, coming into the room with dinner and dropping one bag of fast food, grease staining through the bottom, onto Sam's bed.

"Asshole," Sam mutters, reaching for the chicken sandwich Dean brought him. "I think we should go meet up with your dad."

Dean gives Sam a lost look, and Sam shrugs.

"John Winchester, right?" Sam asks, still marveling at how infantile it feels to be playing dumb about these things.

Dean nods, but remains still in the doorway, looking at Sam like he's a Martian.

"Caleb's working a job with him in Carson City, but he says he's heading out soon. It's close enough to California that I'll be able to get to school when I have to head out next week, and that way neither of you guys will be hunting alone."

"School?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, remember? I'm going to college."

Dean stares. Sam watches his mouth fight a scowl, and he looks away, turning toward his own bed and burger. "Yeah, I remember."

Sam puts his meal aside and moves to sit on the other bed. "Dean, I told you about this. You knew all along I was leaving."

"I know," he says, picking at the sesame seeds on the bun. "I just thought, maybe, if I showed you that hunting isn't that bad you might…" Dean licks his lips and looks at Sam. "Forget it. It was stupid."

Sam frowns. He thinks of the lengths Dean went to—in those few days they had after Sam graduated and before everything went to shit—to make sure Sam was always happy and amused and not worrying about anything. His brother was hoping the same thing—hoping that he could make Sam stay if he was good enough, as if Dean being good enough was ever the problem. Sam swallows and shakes his head. "No, Dean, not stu—"

"I don't need a fucking babysitter."

"I didn't say you did."

"Didn't you?" Dean asks, and Sam can't hold his gaze. A part of going to see John, leaving Dean with him, definitely has something to do with Sam worrying how Dean is going to manage on his own, if he'll still take a turn for suicidal, even with the succubus's spell broken. And the rest of the reasons…well, it's not like Sam can really explain those, either.

"I just want to make this as easy as—"

"It's not going to be easy," says Dean, reaching for the remote and turning the TV on. "Not for me."

Sam knows that's supposed to be the end of it. He slides his hand between Dean's legs and presses his mouth to Dean's neck. "We still have a few nights to—"

Dean pushes Sam's hand away but lets Sam keep kissing him. "You're not that stupid. Don't pretend to be, okay?"

"I just want to enjoy this while we can, Dean." Dean makes an effort to focus on the television, and Sam snatches the remote, powers it off, and throws it across the room. "If you're pissed, at least talk to me about it."

Dean glances over at Sam for a moment, just out of the side of his eye, and Sam knows it's because he doesn't want Sam to see his face, as if he can hide how much this is hurting him.

"I'm not pissed at you, I'm happy for you. But I can't be happy about it, don't ask me to."

"You'll be fine without me," Sam says, because he actually believes that. Dean has only known him for a few months. This is the best thing that could happen for him, comparatively speaking.

" _You'll_ be fine without _me_ , Sammy. Don't confuse the two." Dean finally looks at Sam, and the expression nearly makes him want to take everything back. Forget Stanford, forget Dean's memories. He can't leave Dean to look like that. "You never let me in all the way, but I let you in."

"Dean, I—"

"No, you don't have to make excuses. I know you had your brother, and there have been guys before me, and I know you loved them. I'm just someone you've been fucking for a few months. And you've been scared, I know that, too. I felt you pushing me away. There's this coldness I can't shake off of you, no matter how hard I try."

 _Indifference you trained me hard to hold on to_ , Sam thinks, almost chuckling at the irony.

"But you're all I've got, Sam. You're all I've ever had. And I know we haven't known each other long, believe me. I know how ridiculous this is going to sound. But my whole life, something's been missing. There's been this hole and…I was happy, sometimes. It wasn't so bad, you know? Or I thought it wasn't so bad. And then it went away when I met you. The more time we spend together the more I realize I was practically dead back then, and I can't go back to living like that now."

That's the succubus talking, Sam reminds himself. It was true for a while, Dean wouldn't have been able to live without Sam, but it's different now. It's all in Dean's head.

"You'll be fine, I promise," says Sam, even though he's still not 100% sure about that. Sam has to try, at least. Not just for Dean's memories either. He knows now, even more than when he first decided to go to school, that he has to try to be a complete person without his brother. Because when Dean didn't know him, Sam was nothing. Knowing that he can disappear that easily has been more terrifying than most of the monsters Sam's ever fought.

"Take me with you? I'll stop hunting, get a real job. Just don't just leave me. We could have something if you give me a chance. I won't hurt you if you'll just trust me."

That's true, it could be that easy. There was a time when Sam fantasized that Dean would drop hunting and follow him, but he gave up on that when Dean was still his brother, and now even the slim sliver of hope he'd been clinging to is shot to hell. Sam has to get away, has to give Dean time to remember on his own. "You can't give up everything to come live in a dorm with me, man. Be realistic."

"I'm being realistic. Even if I hate it. I'll hate losing you more."

"Why?" Sam asks, letting himself droop a little. After the last time, Sam never wanted to have to ask that question again. Never wanted to hear Dean's _I don't know, I just have to_ again. But if it'll win him the argument… "You don't even know why you like me, do you?"

Dean's eyebrows draw together, and for a moment Sam thinks he won this round, as much as he didn't want to. Dean just has to love him, probably doesn't even like Sam without the obligation of blood or some succubus frying his brain.

"Because…you're kind of funny sometimes, in a lame way. And you're smarter than you have any right to be, and all you use it for is pissing me off. And you…you give me shit, Sam, but you kiss me like I'm not some guy you picked up at a bar. And it's killing me to know you can leave, but you won't let anything scare you away from what you want, and I—because fuck you, man. Don't try to make me look like I don't know what I want. I'm not a kid, I wouldn't be saying any of this shit if I didn't mean it."

Dean grabs his food and the jacket he'd dropped on the table by the door when he came in, leaves the room without another word. It's raining hard outside, but Sam knows that won't stop him. He'll find coverage in the Impala, he'll drive around for a few hours, and when he comes home he'll be back to pretending he's okay. He'll climb into Sam's bed, trying not to wake Sam up, and hold on too tight when he wraps his arm around him.

He'll act exactly the same way he has since Sam first mentioned Stanford, and he'll do it because he really does love Sam. Sam's an idiot for questioning it, and now it's only gonna be harder to leave.

"This had better be some kind of joke," John says, keeping his voice steady. It's deceptive, Sam can see his hand tightening around the glass of whiskey in his hand, knows he has to be careful, because John's close to snapping.

"It's not a joke, sir," Sam replies. "None of it."

John slams the glass down on the table and looks up at Sam. "No."

"No?"

"You don't have my permission to leave."

"All due respect, I didn't ask for it."

"You're a pain in the ass, but I know you better than to think you're about to abandon your brother when he needs help to go to some prissy college." John's eyes narrow. "If there's something you want, son, you come right out and ask for it. Making up some threat is not how we go about things in this family."

"I'm not…Dad, are you serious? I tell you Dean might be in trouble, and this is what you choose to focus on? I'm not asking you for anything. I'm here for Dean's sake."

"For Dean's sake? You really about to pretend you're doing this for Dean?"

"I have to leave or he won—"

John finally raises his voice. "Or he won't what, Sam? What excuse could you possibly have invented to make this acceptable? He's been looking out for you your whole life. You're leaving him when he needs you to return the favor. That's inexcusable, and you're not dumb enough not to know it."

Sam opens his mouth to respond, try to explain his and Bobby's theories about how to get the memories back, but John's words hit like a slap across Sam's face, and John isn't listening—isn't going to listen. He closes his mouth and looks away, shaking his head.

"I didn't think so," John says. "Your brother should be home any moment. We're going to leave and go back to hunting as a family, since you apparently need supervision, and you will never mention this again, understood?"

"No, sir," says Sam. "I didn't get a word of that."

John is about to yell something back, but lights filter in through the window, and they freeze in the middle of their fight, recognizing the roar of the Impala's engine pulling up outside. Dean's back. If Sam doesn't wrap this up, Dean could hear the wrong thing. It could ruin everything.

"I'm going," Sam says, hoping his words sound more final out loud than they do in his head. "I'm an adult and you can't stop me, so just…just promise me you'll take care of Dean."

"Don't you start implying I'm the one who doesn't look after his family."

They hear the sound of the key in the door, and Sam seizes forward, grabs John's hand. "Dad, please, just. If you want to be pissed, be pissed. But if you don't hate me at all, please don't tell him anything about me."

John sighs. "We'll see, Sam."

The door opens and Dean pokes his head in, grinning. "How's that research coming? Caleb and I got all the—guys, everything all right in here? You look like you've been…"

Sam turns to stare at the ground, but John keeps his gaze on Dean. "Son, why don't you go to your room? I need to talk to your friend here."

Dean's eyebrows draw together, and he turns to look at Sam.

"Dean, please," Sam adds quietly. "Do as he says."

Dean closes his mouth and swallows, then nods at John. "Yes, sir," he says, throwing Sam one more confused look before continuing to the room.

They wait until the door is completely shut before John leans in. "Does Dean know you're leaving?"

Sam nods. "He's known for months, before the memory thing happened."

" _Before_?" John yells, turning toward the room. "And he didn't tell—?"

Sam puts a hand on his shoulder. "He didn't like it anymore than you do, but it wasn't his to tell. Please don't involve him, Dad. This is our fight. He's going through enough."

John hands curl into fists. "You don't seem to be all that concerned with how much he's going through."

"I know you won't believe me, but this is the best thing I can do."

"You go and you get your things, Sam. And you leave if you want to leave. But if you go, don't you dare think of coming back."

Sam stares at his father for the longest moment of his life, waiting for John to falter. He won't apologize or take it back, Sam knows him better than that. But he can't really believe his dad is serious, looks hard for something in his expression that Sam can convince himself means John is bluffing.

"Well, hurry up, son. Do you have a bus to catch or don't you?"

Sam shoves past John and stomps to the room Dean is in. He has to pack and leave, or he's gonna lose his nerve.

“I don’t know why he’s so upset,” Dean says as soon as Sam comes in, “but he’ll calm down. I swear. He’s a good guy.”

Sam shrugs, pushes into the bedroom. He starts throwing the few things he's taken out in the hour and a half since they arrived back into his duffel, and he can feel Dean standing a few feet behind him, just watching.

“Don’t go,” Dean whispers when Sam is tossing the last of his belongings into the bag. He slides his hand onto Sam’s shoulder from behind. His words are stronger when he speaks again, “Stay with me, Sam.”

Sam turns the way Dean’s urging him and looks at his brother. Months ago, he’d been sure he wouldn’t be able to do it if Dean asked him not to. But Dean wouldn’t have asked, not his Dean, and it’s because this one can that Sam knows he has to. His back is facing Dean again in seconds.

Dean doesn’t accept it. “I’ll take you to California, if that’s where you wanna go. We can drive there tomorrow.” Dean slides his fingers down Sam’s spine, pulling closer. “Just don’t leave me.”

Sam looks at him again, puts his hands on Dean's face and kisses him briefly. “Dean, please just let me go. You’re gonna make this worse for both of us.”

Dean frowns and pulls away trying to hide it. He forces a smile and nods, like this was all his idea, and it’s so much like Sam’s brother that Sam's stomach drops. Sam is leaving just in time to have ruined Dean's one good chance at being fine without him. “Yeah, you're right,” Dean says, and then he pulls the leather cord around his neck off.

Sam hasn’t seen Dean take this necklace off in years, and he thinks Dean is trying to be nasty until he grabs Sam’s hand and presses the amulet into his palm.

“What are you doing, man?”

“I want you to have it.” He looks up and meets Sam’s eyes.

“I’m not accepting this,” Sam replies, shoving Dean’s hand away with too much force.

“It’s nothing to me, Sam.” He laughs lightly. “You know, I can’t even remember where the damn thing came from. But maybe you can…think about me when you wear it.”

The irony is a kick to Sam’s gut, and he nearly whimpers. Sam takes the hand Dean’s holding the amulet in and closes Dean’s fingers around it tightly. “It doesn’t matter. Keep it. Don’t ever lose it, Dean. Promise me.”

“You want me to care about something like this now?” Dean asks.

Sam shoves Dean's hand back into his chest and holds it there. “I need you to. I need you to keep this and I need you to remember me whenever you look at it, or touch it. I need you to, Dean.”

Dean doesn’t say anything else, slips the necklace back around his neck. Sam grabs the amulet as soon as it’s resting over Dean’s heart, back where it belongs, and uses it pull Dean in for a needy kiss.

“Stay, Sam,” Dean begs as he pulls away. “Please stay, because…I love you. And I haven’t ever...”

Sam tunes it out, can’t stand to hear it. Dean never said that to him, not once, his own big brother didn’t, and Sam thought he’d wanted it. He realizes now that Dean didn’t say it because he didn’t need to, and it’s not this Dean’s fault, but he’ll never be good enough.

Sam picks his bag up, finally resolute, and cups Dean’s face, moving in for one last kiss. “I love you, too,” he says. But he loves his brother more.

“Then don’t—” Dean’s voice breaks. Sam's resolve does not. The door doesn't even make a sound when it closes behind him.


	7. Epilogue: Town Without Autumn

It feels late by the time Sam's staggering home. He's been working for six hours and that was after classes through the morning, so he's ready to collapse into bed and go into a coma by the time he's putting his key into the lock of his apartment. It doesn't matter that it's only 8 p.m. and the sky is dark but still blue outside the window. Sam doesn't even have the energy to make something to eat.

He kicks his shoes off by the door, lets his messenger bag drop next to them, even though he usually packs it and leaves it ready on the kitchen counter for class the next day. Something feels off from the moment he looks around, but there's no sign of what it is.

Stupid hunter instincts, Sam figures. Just being paranoid. It wouldn't be the first time.

When he gets to the door of his room, though, it makes sense. He doesn't have to reach for the light switch to recognize the profile of the man sitting on the edge of his bed, head resting in his hands.

Sam leans against the doorframe. "Dean?"

The silhouette turns to face him. Sam can hear but not see the smile. "Sammy."

Sam does flip on the lights then, because the way Dean says it…it sounds exactly the way it's supposed to. Dean looks tired and older, lines cut into his eyes like the skin isn't used to smiling anymore, and he's even more beautiful than Sam remembered. He's looking at Sam like he's thinking the same thing.

"What are you doing here, Dean?" Sam asks.

"We're brothers, aren't we?" he says, like it's not a real question. Like the answer should be obvious. And it should be, it really should, but it isn't. Sam doesn't reply, so Dean scratches the back of his neck. "I remember," he says. "Everything."

Sam stays completely impassive in the doorway, doesn't let his face give anything away. Dad could have told him, and if Dad told him, then it's all over. Dean will never remember. "Where were you October 15, 1998?"

Dean snickers. "You're such a woman."

"Answer the question," says Sam as firmly as he can manage.

"I was sitting in my car in Broomfield, Colorado, waiting under a gas station for a hail storm to pass." Dean looks up, meets Sam's eyes for the first time. "I was letting my little brother kiss me for the first time. I was thinking I should really stop, that I should really know better, but I didn't know anything better, so I kissed him back instead."

Sam feels a year and a half of worry drain away, nearly collapses right on the spot, and wouldn't that just make Dean's night. "Dean," Sam says, trying very hard to keep the quiver out of his voice. Dean stands to catch Sam's hug, lets Sam hold on too long, and only laughs a little when he pulls away.

"What are—?" Sam swallows. "How did you—?"

"It's been coming slowly since you left," Dean answers, flinching a little at the last word. "I finally asked Dad, he said he thought I just wasn't bringing you up because I was pissed at you." Dean shakes his head. "And that was obviously a load of shit, so I asked Bobby. He, uh, explained it all."

"How much do you remember?"

"Everything," Dean assures him. "I promise, Sammy. I knew I couldn't come see you until I was sure. You should probably praise me on my self-restraint, by the way. It wasn't easy."

"Even that summer?"

Dean's eyes dim and he nods. "I remember that just as well as the rest of it."

Sam has no idea how to respond. He doesn't know if Dean is upset with him for loving that Dean or if he thinks Sam enjoyed the easier relationship or what. But Dean catches his wrist and puts a hand on Sam's neck until Sam looks at him, and Dean understands everything. Sam can see that in his expression, because _this_ is his brother. "Sam, I'm so sorry. That was supposed to be a good summer. We—you deserved that much."

Sam shrugs like it doesn't matter; he knows Dean will get it. "It's over now, though," Sam replies.

Dean looks down at his hands. "You told me to remember you. Before you left. I didn't get it for a year. All I could think was, 'How does this idiot kid think I could forget if I wanted?' Fuck. Sam, I would never have. Not again."

"I thought…I thought it would never be over," Sam replies, starting to get worked up. "I would never see… Dean, some nights I thought you'd forget me again and I wouldn't be there to remind you."

"Shut up, Sam," Dean says, pulling Sam in for a brutal kiss.

Sam sobs into it, pulls him just as hard, thinks that if he wakes up tomorrow with a split lip from teeth clashing, he'll wake up happier than he has any right to be.

Sam lets Dean drag him forward one step as he takes one back, doesn't have to question if they're heading for the bed.

"Are we really gonna do this?" Sam asks before taking the tumble. "I mean, is it a good ide—"

Sam's words die when Dean lets go of him, pulls his shirt over his head, and crawls onto Sam's bed. Who cares if it's a good idea—Dean lies on Sam's bed like it's his bed. Sam gets the crazy idea that it should be, he should ask Dean to stay, and they never, ever have to spend another hour apart.

Sam looks his brother over as he relaxes into the pillows. Dean has a bright red mark across his left thigh, and Sam doesn't know where it came from. He has new scars, too, but they're almost too small to see, burn marks on the back of his hand from working near a grill. Dean would think they were shameful even if Sam has learned to love scars the way his brother always did from the ones he didn't get hunting.

It hits Sam hard, brings it home that he's missed a year of his brother's life. Dean's missed a year of his. Even if Dean does stay, they'll never get that back. And what would Dean do here? They have different lives now.

"Sam?" Dean asks, sitting up. "We don't have to," he says, reaching for his shirt.

"We do," Sam replies, because he's not asking Dean to say. Dean wouldn't if he did. This is their only chance. This could be their last chance. He tries to unbutton the stupid black button-down he has to wear to work, but his hands are trembling too much. He wants to tear it, almost does, even though he can't afford a new one and he'd basically be asking to get fired.

Then Dean's at the end of the bed, sitting up on his knees, reaching for the fabric. Sam steps closer, looks down at Dean as his brother works the buttons open almost reverentially.

"Shit, Sam. If I'd thought for a minute I was letting you go out in the world without even being able to get undressed properly…"

A laugh bubbles out of Sam's lips, and he catches Dean's hand as it pushes the fabric aside, tries to touch his chest. There'll be time for that later and right now, Sam just wants to hold on for the ten seconds he has before Dean mocks him for it.

He squeezes Dean's fingers, wondering at how much smaller they've gotten compared to his own. Dean's not exactly delicate, but they were about the same size when Sam left. He's tall enough to tower now, wide enough to wrap around his brother and still have room to move.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Just kiss me, you dumb dick."

Sam does, throws him back onto the bed, and follows him in. The first time is fast and desperate, the second is slow, and Sam loses count of how many times they get off. They make it last, relearn everything about this, because as soon as the sun comes up, they're done, like this is some fairytale gone horribly awry.

After a few hours, all drive for sex has waned, and they're just sticking together, laughing without saying anything important, because everything worth saying would ruin the little glimpse of happiness they have.

Sam has an arm around Dean's shoulder, is staring up at the ceiling and tracing symbols into the sweat on his brother's back, and he cannot physically stop himself from asking, "Dean, are we ever going to see each other again?"

Dean begins to hum "The Morning After" against Sam's skin. Sam fights laughter and puts on a chastising tone. "It's way too soon to make succubus jokes, dude."

Dean props his chin on Sam's chest and smiles up at him knowingly. "Aww, Sammy, you must have really missed me if you're catching my South Park references."

"Fuck off," Sam replies. It's true, of course. Sam hates that stupid show, but he can never make himself change the channel when he remembers the way Dean would light up when it was on. "I'd rather we never mention it again, to be honest."

Dean looks up at him, surprised, but he must see how much Sam means it, because he nods. "Definitely fine by me. You're the one who always wants to talk everything to death."

"Not this. Never this again."

Dean says nothing, and his arm around Sam's waist tightens, but not enough for Sam to be sure he's not imagining it. Just like old times.

"It was a real question," Sam says after a long silence. "About seeing you."

"I don't know, Sam," Dean replies, the playfulness all gone from his tone. "I'm not a fucking psychic or something."

"Will you come back? If you can, will you come back?"

Dean's smile is pinched. "If you want me to, kid."

Sam shakes his head. There's no point arguing with Dean's ridiculous ideas about Sam being better off without him. "Just tell me you'll visit, it's not really that hard."

Dean sighs, presses his cheek back down. "Don't make me say it, man."

"You don't have to stay away, you know," Sam says. "I can't go to you, but Dad never said you couldn't…you're always welcome here, Dean. And wanted."

"Yeah, okay, you're a very good hostess, point taken."

Sam pulls Dean in closer, even as he's getting pissed. "Can you not make a joke out of this?"

"You know I have to," Dean replies. He kisses Sam's chest, and Sam hears him take a deep breath. "Go to sleep. You have class in the morning."

"Dean, you can't reall—"

"Shh," Dean interrupts. "We're trying to sleep."

Sam remembers how tired he'd been when he got home, feels the exhaustion suddenly reemerging, and, instead of fighting Dean like he really should, he falls for the trap of his big brother's touches soothing him the way they used to during thunderstorms.

It only hits Sam just how much it really was Dean when he wakes up alone the next morning, and there's not so much as a fold in the covers to prove he was ever there.

"He'll be back," Sam tells himself, says it out loud just to make it more convincing. "Eventually he'll have to be."

**End**


End file.
